Willingness to Pay for Digital News Remains Tepid at Best

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published the latest edition of its Digital News Report yesterday. The report examines various aspects of news consumption across different markets and contains a mixed bag of results for the struggling newspaper industry.

The good news is that the willingness to pay for digital news content has slightly increased since last year. The bad news, however, is the fact that those unwilling to pay for digital news content are still in the vast majority. Only 12 percent of American consumers have paid for digital news content in the past year and, to make things worse, only 9 percent of those who haven't paid for digital news in the past can see themselves doing so at some point in the future. That means almost 80 percent of Americans have no intentions of ever paying for digital news content; a number that will probably give the chills to newspaper executives who are desperately trying to figure out how to monetize their digital offerings.