The Economist Putting Up Pay Wall

The Economist is trying to economize, as it will launch a new pay wall Oct. 13, with the major difference from its current structure being that the current week’s print edition will only be available to subscribers.

Non-subscribers will only have access to all content more than 90 days old, rather than all content from the past 12 months.

The Economist Website publisher Ben Edwards said:

The Economist brand has innovated and expanded online, moving beyond making the magazine available via the Internet to become a hub for intelligent discussion and debate. Our intention is to continue to develop intelligent discussion as a free, advertising-supported experience, but to charge for the weekly magazine online.

Through “This week’s print edition,” we offer readers an online experience of reading the magazine. We consider this to be a premium reading experience and plan to develop the online edition of our magazine for our most loyal and engaged readers: subscribers. We will continue to encourage both subscribers and non-subscribers to participate in the extraordinary discussions we host on www.economist.com, Facebook and elsewhere, catalyzed by our breaking news commentary, our blogs and audio-visual content and by our award-winning debates.

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