Paywalls will help fund campaigning journalism

In this guest post, News Limited’s group editorial director Campbell Reid responds to the views of ninemsn’s Hal Crawford that the company’s push into metered paywalls is about data rather than dollars.

Hal Crawford is both right and wrong in his article which argued that our digital subscription plans are all about the data.

Sure, the data you get from having people register and then subscribe, as our metered model does, is incredibly valuable.  On that point, I’m not sure I understand Hal’s argument it’s not a decent strategy to have data about your consumers if everyone else has data on theirs as well.

Although his numbers are a bit off, Hal is on the right track when he says the metered model captures your most loyal readers. That’s the whole point of it – you want your loyal consumers to subscribe but not scare off your more casual readers who are still valuable.