DUBAI: The UAE English-language daily Gulf News has announced that it will start putting its online content behind a paywall.
It is unclear when the content will stop being available for free.
Print subscribers will receive a complimentary one-year access to gulfnews.com; other readers can sign up for Standard Access for AED 5.95 ($1.6) per month or Prime Access AED 8.96 per month or AED 52 per year.
The Standard package allows access to most of the website content, while the Prime package will also allow access to the new categories the newspaper is launching, including Living in UAE, Your Money, Parenting and The Good.
The move is a first for a UAE newspaper. Print revenues have been steadily declining with print media taking less than 5 percent of the total ad revenue in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, according to a GroupM report.
In a Gulf News article, CEO, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director of Publishing, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, said: “We were offering our high-quality content online for free for the longest time, when the print revenue gave us the freedom to do so. But that is on the decline, as can be seen the world over.”
He added that the decision to put content behind a paywall was taken “a while ago” as it is no longer possible to carry on offering content for free while revenues keep declining.
He said the digital paywall is not meant to be a deterrent for people reading the news. Instead, “it is a gateway for trusted, credible and verified news” that is aimed at protecting readers from “fake news, clickbait and low-quality advertising.”
The Gulf News website has an average of 230 million page views and 15 million unique visitors every month. Yet, said Ahmad, “the commensurate revenue has not come in,” which has an impact on the quality of advertising.
He believes that the paywall will not only encourage better journalism but also better advertising. “Once you have paid subscribers, it will mean a targeted market that advertisers can optimise and utilise more effectively.”
Over the past two years, more publishers have introduced paywalls to sustain their business, although some lowered their paywalls during the pandemic.
“The idea was that information about the outbreak of COVID-19 had life-saving potential, and so it should be available to everyone, not just to subscribers — a fraction of news readers who tend to be the wealthiest and most highly-educated,” reported the Columbia Journalism Review.
Meher Murshed, Executive Editor, Digital at Gulf News, said in an article on the paper’s website that the need of the hour is to break news instantly, which can compromise accuracy.
“There is a cost to fact-checked, responsible journalism, one that is not click bait or chases page views. We have to spend resources for in-depth reporting.”
That is why Gulf News decided to launch a digital subscription, said Murshed, “so we can continue giving our readers quality journalism.”
