Singapore's Straits Times to charge for access

By Martyn Williams

Singapore's The Straits Times newspaper will begin charging users to access its Web site from the middle of March, the newspaper's publisher, Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., said in a message to users on Thursday.

The newspaper's move comes several months after it began requiring readers to complete a free registration process in order to access the newspaper online. In charging for content it joins a small number of publications around the world that are offering access to the full newspaper online in return for a subscription fee. Other major newspapers doing so include Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

The Straits Times will offer a one-month subscription for S$15 (US$9.20), a six-month subscription for S$72 and an annual subscription for S$120. A subscription will be required from March 15. In contrast a one-year subscription to the printed newspaper in Singapore costs S$276.

"We believe that we have a good and valuable product that users will want to pay for," the newspaper explained in the message. "It's also not a tenable business model to charge for the print edition of the newspaper and not for its online edition."

The newspaper will improve the content of the Web site as it begins the subscription service, it said. Business reports will be posted to the Web site 12 hours earlier at 6a.m., all showbiz gossip and lifestyle features will be online and the newspaper's consumer electronics and health supplements will be available in full on the same day that they are distributed with the newspaper. The archive will also expand from 3 days to 7 days, it said.

Posted February 24, 2005 05:32 PM |