Hearst papers to start charging for some online content

Many Hearst-owned papers, including the troubled San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, will soon begin charging for access to some of their online content, according to Editor & Publisher.
President Steven Swartz sent a memo to staff Monday announcing the decision and laying out some of the details.

“Exactly how much paid content to hold back from our free sites will be a judgment call made daily by our management, whose mission should be to run the best free Web sites in our markets without compromising our ability to get a fair price from consumers for the expensive, unique reporting and writing that we produce each day,” Swartz said in the memo.

Swartz also said the company will stress the need to increase the amount of online-only content its papers produce in an effort to draw in readers with exclusive content.
He also said that some of that content will come from "other great sources of content in our communities," mentioning prominent citizens and bloggers as examples.

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