The venerable Editor & Publisher has decided to remove its paywall to its content. The magazine’s online presence has historically had articles available only to subscribers and even articles posted openly on their website would disappear into the paid archives after a couple of weeks.
“We have not been big believers in paywalls,” said Duncan McIntosh, president of Duncan McIntosh Company, Inc. (DMC), which publishes E&P. “Paywalls in name alone connote a psychological negative, which is one reason we have never been big believers. Nielsen had been using one for a number of years, but nothing during the past year has changed our opinion about them. We have removed it to build more traffic and make more of our original content available to our visitors.”
Second, E&P has promoted Adam Tessin to technology director. Tessin will perform a much-needed overhaul of the online site in the first quarter of 2011.
Aside from the usual debate about paywalls, I’m hoping this restores all the links I’ve created over the years that instantly broke once the story went behind the paywall.
Uh-oh!
First time I’ve heard anyone say “We’re giving it away instead of charging money for it, because we’re not Communists.”