San Francisco Chronicle gives up on paywall

The San Francisco Chronicle dropped its paywall site, SFChronicle.com, which began in March. That means the newspaper’s contents will be free online.

Chronicle Publisher Jeffrey Johnson and President Joanne Bradford issued a joint statement that “The SFChronicle.com site will continue to provide readers with an online version that replicates a newspaper experience and reflects the changes in the news throughout the day.”

“If the Chron can induce large numbers of subscribers to shell out legal tender for content readily available for free, then it will have solved the media conundrum of our age,” SF Weekly’s Joe Eskenazi writes.

Indeed, that is the problem facing newspapers: How can you get online readers to pay for information they can get free elsewhere on the Internet? 

As for print journalism, the news often is hours and hours old before it reaches a subscriber’s home in this day of 24/7 news channels and Internet websites that cater to slivers of interest groups.

So newspapers cut staff and their stock prices slide on Wall Street.

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