The past fortnight brought two announcements that should make every senior news executive pause. Reach plc is introducing a part-paywall on the Manchester Evening News, one of the country’s largest regional titles, and The Observer, a paper with more than two centuries of history, has launched its first digital paywall.
While they are entirely independent decisions, together they signal a broader shift. They reflect the moment when publishers across the spectrum are recognising that the old economics of digital publishing are no longer sufficient on their own.
The pivot to paid is no longer the preserve of national titles that have long invested in distinctive, high-quality journalism and built deep relationships with their readers. It is becoming a necessary move across the industry, including for publishers who once dismissed subscriptions as incompatible with their model.
I spent many years at The Economist building a reader revenue engine that became the group’s most important profit driver, and later worked at The Times as its GM during a time of accelerated subscription growth. Those experiences showed me the power of a well-executed subscription strategy.
What feels different today is the speed at which even the most ad-centric publishers are recognising that they cannot rely on digital advertising alone. Low CPMs, shrinking referral traffic, the dominance of Google and the early impact of AI summarisation have combined to expose the fragility of the ad-funded model. The limits of a scale-only strategy are now well understood.
This is why both the MEN and The Observer have arrived at the same conclusion, albeit from very different directions. Reach plc built its digital business on sheer audience scale, so introducing a paid layer marks a significant shift. The hybrid model is measured: premium journalism and an ad-lite experience for those who pay, alongside continued reach for advertisers. Even converting a small proportion of loyal readers into predictable, recurring income will create stability that scale alone cannot deliver. It also highlights the growing recognition that regional journalism must adapt if it is to remain sustainable in the long term.
The Observer’s move is a different expression of the same trend. With a starting price of £16 a month it is making a clear statement about the value of its journalism. This logic is familiar. At The Economist we built around high-LTV readers who relied on us to interpret a complex world.
The era when a paywall in itself was considered a strategy is behind us. Today the differentiator is the rigour and consistency with which a publisher executes it. At HBM Advisory, we see the same pattern across the publishers we advise. Leaders understand the strategic shift, yet many underestimate the operational challenge.
A paywall on its own delivers very little. Without a clean customer journey, a product built for habit and an organisation aligned to reader value, performance will stall. Pricing and content are rarely the real blockers. More often it is friction in the checkout, weak onboarding, limited data capability or internal structures that remain optimised for an advertising-first world and for print formats.
This is why we focus on transformation at the core. We helped The Wall Street Journal implement an audience- and subscription-first philosophy, beginning with a content audit and then running mindset workshops to embed the necessary newsroom changes. Those changes helped to unlock the cultural shift required for an audience-first newsroom whose content is primarily monetised through subscriptions.
When we advised Times of Malta on its subscription re-launch, it was evident a new phone app was essential to create daily habits and support growth. Subscriptions are now on track in a country where the prevailing thinking was that “nobody will pay for news”.
At MIT Technology Review, shifting investment from expensive direct mail to always-on digital prospecting modernised the funnel and drove faster, more efficient growth. In every case the lesson is the same: the organisations that succeed are the ones that optimise reader journeys forensically and relentlessly.
The era of expecting programmatic advertising alone to fund the full cost of modern journalism is ending, but reach remains strategically vital. Large audiences will continue to underpin advertising revenues for as long as those revenues remain meaningful.
What is changing is the role reach plays. It is no longer the destination; it is the fuel. Broad audiences create the pool from which the next generation of high-value subscribers emerge, provided publishers have the product, data and journey in place to convert interest into habit. The strongest, most resilient businesses will be those that use reach to power both revenue models rather than rely on it to sustain one.
The paywall pivot is not a retreat. It is a move towards resilience and the ability to invest confidently in the journalism that sets each publication apart. The publishers who commit early and stay disciplined will shape what the next decade of digital journalism looks like. The pivot is already underway. The winners will be those who act with discipline and conviction.
Michael Brunt is co-founder of HBM Advisory and former COO & Publisher of The Economist, where he led the transformation of its reader revenue engine into the Group’s primary driver of profitability. He later served as GM at The Times during a critical period of subscription growth. Today he advises leading publishers across Europe, North America and Asia on digital transformation, subscription strategy and the organisational changes required to compete in an AI-driven market
