Going paywall...

A couple of things they could really improve:
1. Chain subscriptions (mentioned already). I think this would have more success in smaller companies, unless a big company like Gannett did an a la carte system where you could choose which to subscribe to. Otherwise I could see them trying to jack the prices too high ($99/month for all of Gannett!!!!)
2. Single-article purchases. I may not want to subscribe, but would be nice to have the ability to purchase one article.

 

Bam! No longer a holdout for free, USA Today launches a paywall and digital-only subscription plan - Poynter

 

Newspapers move like a herd -- a herd of lemmings.

 

The Dallas Morning News tried to pull off a "premium experience" by having a two-tier digital subscription and it was, as best I recall, an unmitigated disaster.

As already noted, and this might hard to explain to a group of newspaper hands, but the local newspaper is not the only source of professional news gathering in town and all those others have websites and they're either free or free-ish.

My local paper charges $34 a month for online and I've never given them a dime because if you have a library card, you can log into the library's site and read it for free.

But, anyway, in my town, there's at least 10 websites with professional news gathering and one has a hard paywall, and two have first three articles free type sites. The other seven, TV and radio stations and news sites, are completely free. And that doesn't include AP and what the local bureau does. So local news is 70 percent free. And, sure, TV isn't as depth, blah, blah, blah but what you get for nothing is more than adequate. My Washington Post sub is $4 a month and I'm getting the NYTimes for $3.99 a month, at least until December. And even if I pay for the full sub, my total cost is still half of what the local paper is.

The advantage newspapers have is depth of coverage because they have huge staffs but outside of a handful, that advantage has been lost. Lots and lots of newsrooms, that were once sizable shops, have staff counts in the single digits. And yes, I'm on deadline and procrastinating by posting here.

 

Bring back Deal Chicken. Now more than ever, our great hope.

 

The Detroit papers went to a paywall a few months ago
They also have a content deal with Yahoo
A lot of paywall stories end up on Yahoo