The Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney spoke with Justin Ellis at Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab about the A.H. Belo-owned newspaper’s decision to erect a paywall, admitting that the move represents a gamble. Moroney told Ellis:

This is a big risk — I’m not confident we’re going to succeed. But we’ve got to try something. We’ve got to try different things. It’s not an over-the-cliff strategy. If this works, great, it’ll be fantastic. If it doesn’t, we can go back to providing access at a lower price or free.

I don’t see impression-based advertising, the thing that paid bills for newspapers for so long, as supportable in the long run for a newspaper.

I don’t think we can wait. The business has enough uncertainty around it.