News International retreats from the public, disagreeing with the idea that mere readers should be allowed, let alone encouraged to freely read and quote from newspapers, e.g. as I do now from “The Times paywall: An end to sharing” by Rory Cellan-Jones.

A great experiment is about to get under way, and it will tell us much about the future of journalism and the willingness of readers to pay for it. In Wapping last night, News International showed off the new websites for The Times and Sunday Times which have opened to the public this morning. Four weeks from now, a paywall will go up in front of the sites and, by News international’s own calculation, more than 90% of their audience will melt away.

This is of course nothing to do with readers’ willingness to pay journalists for their journalism, but the ability for newspapers to charge each reader for reading it, and prevent anyone who hasn’t paid from doing so. When you can’t sell copies, then selling access seems very similar – if you think like a newspaper, that is.

Rory later reveals:

I asked Danny Finkelstein whether it bothered him that from now on none of his journalism would “go viral”, with the risk that he’d be left invisible on the sidelines as the online debate raged through news sites without paywalls. “No,” he insisted,“I want my employer to be paid for my intellectual property.”

That is Stockholm Syndrome. I would think most journalists care more about being paid for their intellectual work than enabling their employers to charge readers for copies of it at monopoly protected prices – and failing that, to charge readers for access.

If news can be freely distributed to the public, the only thing left to pay for is the journalism – and the readers who want more can pay the journalists directly – to write.

See earlier conversations, with:

• Dan Conover – The newspaper suicide pact
• Steve Outing – So what exactly is newspaper web ‘premium’ content? Please tell me
• Danny Sullivan – If Newspapers Were Stores, Would Visitors Be “Worthless” Then?