MW Few people are willing to pay for news online, which makes things tougher for the news industry

By Lukas I. Alpert

A new survey finds that only 17% of people are willing to pay to read news online, with most either looking elsewhere for the news for free or just not reading it at all

It has been one of the most stubborn problems for the news industry - the internet enables it to reach audiences anywhere in the world, but few are willing to pay to read the news.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center has revealed that only 17% of people were willing to hand over their cash to pay for a subscription in the past year, with 83% just moving on when they have bumped into a paywall.

That figure underscores the challenges faced by the news industry as ad revenue has largely shifted toward large platforms like Alphabet Inc.'s Google $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ and Meta Platforms Inc.'s $(META)$ Facebook. Most newsrooms have sought to counter this by tapping into a broader stream of subscription revenue, but many have struggled simply because most readers are unwilling to pay.

Many major news outlets have had difficulty creating meaningful businesses through online subscriptions. While some institutions like the New York Times $(NYT)$ and the Wall Street Journal have built significant online subscription businesses, many have not been able to build up enough of a paying online readership to make up for the revenue that is being lost from their declining print businesses.

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Gannett Co. Inc. $(GCI)$, which publishes around 200 regional and local daily newspapers in the U.S., making it the largest newspaper group in the country, has 1.8 million digital subscribers across all of them, generating $43.3 million in revenue. That was 7.6% of the company's total revenue of $572 million in the last quarter.

Overall, Gannett has seen its total revenue decline by 24% from the same quarter three years ago.

Similarly, Lee Enterprises Inc. $(LEE)$ reported having 728,000 digital subscribers across its 72 newspapers, which brought in $24 million in the last quarter, or about 17% of its total revenue of $137 million.

Lee's total revenue has declined 28% from the same quarter three years ago.

Of the respondents to Pew's survey, 74% said they sometimes encounter paywalls when trying to read news online and 38% said they run into paywalled articles very often.

When readers run into a paywall, 53% said their first instinct is to search for a free version of a news story they are interested in, and 32% say they just move on without reading the news at all. Another 11% said they would try to find a way to read the article without paying. Only 1% of those who responded said their first move would be to simply pay for the story.

Part of the problem could be that readers interested in perhaps just one news article are usually only given the option to buy a long-term subscription, which often means only regular readers of a site are willing to pay for access.

But 49% of those polled said that they were mostly motivated not to pay because "there are plenty of other free news articles." Another 32% said they weren't interested enough in the story to pay. Only 10% said the cost was too high, and 8% said that when they did pay, what they got wasn't worth the cost.

Those who are willing to pay tend to skew older, the survey found, with 25% being 65 or older and 17% being between the ages of 50 and 64. Just 12% were between the ages of 18 and 29. Those willing to pay were also more likely to be wealthy or middle class - with 30% identifying as being upper income and 18% as middle income.

People who will pay for news are more likely to have college degrees or have attended some college - 27% and 15% respectively, according to the survey.

Pew polled 9,482 people for the survey.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 26, 2025 15:48 ET (19:48 GMT)

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