DUBAI: Insider, formerly Business Insider, is making major changes to its newsroom and subscription model, moving away from much of its paywall in a strategic shift for the company.
Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Carlson told staff in a memo on Tuesday that Insider has “made the business decision to move about half of the journalists on our subscription team in front of the paywall,” according to news website Semafor.
The reason for the shift, Carlson said, is that the website is not getting “enough new subscriptions per journalist behind the paywall.”
Insider began rolling out some changes this week, which included informing some mid-level editors and reporters that they are being reassigned to different teams.
The company began experimenting with the new model a few months ago, moving some of its content in front of the paywall.
Before its switch to a subscription model in 2017, Insider relied heavily on Facebook for traffic. Carlson said in a 2016 podcast that the company racked up 1.5 billion video views in a single month, 90 percent of those from Facebook.
The new strategy signals a shift back to the old model in some ways, but Carlson told Semafor that the news company was not completely abandoning its subscription business.
He said Insider is now focused on “juicy, detailed, reported stories about big names across business,” as well as stories that help “investors, entrepreneurs and people seeking alternative career paths.”
The company does not plan to lose any employees as part of the new strategy.
