The Globe and Mail is planning to launch a digital subscription product for premium financial news and insight pieces, beginning this summer.
Editor-in-chief John Stackhouse announced the plans to staff at the newspaper's Toronto offices on Tuesday, after it was approved at a board meeting on Nov. 9.
The Globe and Mail will still feature a robust business-news site for non-subscribers, and that news will be available on mobile devices. Deeper analysis pieces, some feature columnists, and other exclusive features will be provided to paying subscribers. The subscription-based GlobeInvestorGold.com site, which offers personalized stock charts, e-mailed stock alerts and archived news reports, will be folded into the new paid product. It will be expanded with more personalized features for readers.
Pricing has not yet been decided, but it is expected the product will be bundled with some print subscriptions, with separate pricing for digital-only subscribers.
"We need to deepen our relationship with our core readers, and give them services and rewards for that loyalty," Mr. Stackhouse said on Tuesday. "...The active and loyal user is going to have a different relationship from the casual reader."
Publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have had success with putting financial news behind a pay wall. The move toward digital subscriptions goes beyond niche content as well: in March, The New York Times Co. launched a metered website for its flagship paper. That system allows readers a certain number of free articles per month before readers are prompted to buy a digital subscription. In October, the company instituted a metered system for another paper it owns, the Boston Globe.
The Globe and Mail's digital subscription product could work on a metered model similar to the Times, or other terms. The product's details will be determined in the coming months.
The Globe and Mail board also approved a plan to invest heavily in video content in the coming months, some of which will be available for free on the website and some of which will be extra content for subscribers.
The media industry has been looking for ways to maintain readership, as well as revenues from both subscribers and advertisers, as more readers access their content beyond the traditional newspaper and on websites and mobile devices.
"We've been exploring this idea for the past year," Mr. Stackhouse said. "We want to have a diversity of revenue. We don't want to be reliant solely on display advertising."