In a significant change to its business strategy, CNN has officially launched a paywall on CNN.com, the start of a “long-term” effort to construct a sustainable digital subscription offering.
CNN executive VP of digital services Alex MacCallum announced the paywall in a memo to staff Tuesday.
“Starting today, we’re asking users in america to pay a small recurring fee for unlimited access to CNN.com’s world-class articles,” MacCallum wrote. “The overwhelming majority of the 150 million users who visit CNN.com every month will proceed to benefit from the same experience as they do today. Only after users devour a certain variety of free articles will they be prompted to subscribe.
“Along with unlimited access to CNN.com’s articles, subscribers will receive advantages like exclusive election features, original documentaries, a curated every day collection of our most distinctive journalism, and fewer digital ads,” she added.
It will not be immediately clear what number of articles users might want to click to hit the paywall. CNN says that the paid subscriptions will cost $3.99 monthly or $29.99 per 12 months to start out. The CNN homepage, live blogs and breaking news live stories, vertical videos, standalone video pages and interactive content won’t be included within the paywall to start out.
MacCallum adds that the offering will change over time.
“This launch is just step one in CNN’s journey to develop into a more consumer-oriented digital product company,” she wrote. “Over time, we’ll put money into ways to raised meet our users’ needs and expand our aperture to interact and serve recent audiences. We are going to create recent products and businesses, construct recent capabilities in product, engineering, data and subscriptions, and evolve how we work.”
Amongst other things, CNN is predicted so as to add more “have to know” news and evaluation anchored in compelling formats, in addition to more lifestyle-focused “need to know” content. CNN can even ultimately lean more into video and its on-air talent to distinguish it from most other news subscriptions, though text will remain a giant piece of the puzzle.
Earlier this summer CNN cut about 100 jobs as a part of its digital pivot.
