MediaNews to Adopt Web Fee Model Similar to NY Times (Update1)

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- MediaNews Group Inc. will start charging a fee for some articles on two of its newspapers’ Web sites in May, adopting a pay system similar to that announced by the New York Times last month.

The newspapers, in York, Pennsylvania, and Chico, California, will give users free access to as many as 25 “premium” articles monthly, after which they’ll have to pay an undetermined fee unless they subscribe to the print newspapers, said MediaNews President Joseph Lodovic. Premium content may include certain columns and investigative reporting, he said.

“Most of our content will remain free,” Lodovic said yesterday in an e-mail. “Once subscribed, the reader will have access to all premium across MediaNews Group.”

MediaNews, led by Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton, is adopting a so-called metered pay wall to charge readers, similar to the one in place at the Financial Times and to a plan announced by New York Times Co. MediaNews, the closely held publisher of the Denver Post, may expand the pay wall to more of its 54 U.S. dailies, Lodovic said.

Newspaper publishers have been seeking ways to generate more revenue as industrywide advertising sales and print readership plunged. The holding company for MediaNews, Affiliated Media Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection two weeks ago after getting approval to restructure from its lenders.

MediaNews, based in Denver, said in November it planned to charge for some content on the sites of Chico’s Enterprise- Record and York’s Daily Record. The newspapers will determine which content they designate as premium, and it probably will include coupons and puzzles, Lodovic said. Subscribers to the print newspapers will have full access to the Web, or may face a small, undetermined “up-charge,” he said.

The site of the Financial Times, owned by London-based Pearson Plc, allows readers to access as many as 10 free articles monthly before charging at least $3.59 weekly for more. New York-based Times Co. said on Jan. 20 it will begin charging readers in 2011 for some content on NYTimes.com.

MediaNews will use Journalism Online LLC to help process payments for its sites, said Lodovic. New York-based Journalism Online was founded last year by a team including Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net