WCPO will introduce a paywall for much of its website content early next year, NetNewsCheck reports.
Over the past year, the ABC affiliate’s site has added more than 30 editorial staffers to its digital reporting team, including eight veteran reporters covering local crime and justice, politics, business, education and the arts.
Paywalls are increasingly common for newspaper sites — 41 percent of U.S. dailies will have them after Digital First Media puts its paywalls in place, Ken Doctor wrote recently — but they’re an elusive species among TV stations, which could arguably benefit from competitors putting their content behind a gate.
The Cincinnati Enquirer, like all Gannett-owned papers, has a metered paywall. The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns WCPO, announced at the end of 2012 it would install paywalls for all of its newspaper sites.
You can see the stories WCPO considers premium content on its site now: They’re marked with a “9” logo.
