How Hearst Newspapers Converts Free Content Readers to Paid Subscribers

As legacy publishers’ print ad revenues shrink, the race to boost digital revenues is on. For some publishers, that means converting more digital readers to paid subscribers. eMarketer’s Patricia Orsini spoke with Robertson Barrett, Hearst Newspapers’ president of digital media, about the company’s strategy for gaining subscribers, and how advertisers feel about paywalls.

But, for example, in our major markets—Houston, San Antonio and San Francisco—we have free, advertising-supported sites that tend to focus on breaking news and real-time content. Those sites have fairly substantial reach of around 60% in their markets. They leverage content from the newspapers, but are run by separate digital teams. We also have paid sites that follow the newsrooms’ output more closely, and have longer takes, multimedia packages and enterprise journalism.

We’re increasingly focused on the interplay between those properties, and we’re focused aggressively on learning how to exploit the intersection of them as a potential strength.