Boston Globe to Use BostonGlobe.com as Pay Site & Boston.com as Free Site

Editors of the Boston Globe announced that they are moving towards the paid subscription model, and they intend to use BostonGlobe.com as the portal for the paid news site, which will contain all of the articles currently found in the print edition. They will keep Boston.com as the free website for visitors who choose not to pay for subscriptions.

From a geodomainer’s perspective, I think it’s nice to see that the Boston Globe is going to reinforce that BostonGlobe.com is one website with paid news and content, while their city.com site, Boston.com, will remain free and presumably the most widely read. Boston.com will have event listings and really be the go to site for information about Boston, notoriety which I believe it’s already achieved.

From a blogger’s perspective, it will be interesting to see how this experiment goes. Rupert Murdoch has been talking about putting up a pay wall as have others, which was previously tried by the NY Times (owners of the Boston Globe) with their Times Select version (no longer running).

If newspapers successfully adopt the paid subscriber model, perhaps bloggers and others will follow suit. In my opinion, it’s unlikely that the paid model will work since there are still plenty of blogs and websites that make enough money from advertisers that a pay wall isn’t necessary. I am an avid Boston Globe reader, but I won’t pay to read it since there are plenty of other sources of free information.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

3 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t think subscription news will be successful. So many reasons. Boston.com however is one of the most trafficked geo domains anywhere on the internet. I think the newspaper made a very early migration to Boston.com. They are pretty much the template for the hardcopy newspaper to online migration.

    The site should be drawing major advertising dollars, and I would imagine it’s the most visited site around Boston, MA by far.

    • @ M

      I agree… I also know how popular Boston sports teams are, and they have great coverage on Boston.com. It will be very interesting to watch this model play out because sports fans have their favorite writers (and those they hate but still respect), and if they disappear behind a pay wall, I think people would be more inclined to pay in Boston than elsewhere. If the Globe can’t make it work, for this reason alone, I think it would pose major problems for others who want to follow suit.

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