Dan Conover on newspaper paywalls and the Media General sale: "Print subscription charges cover some portion of the cost of paper, printing and delivery, not content costs, but the paywall advocates have a point when it comes to the consumer's perspective. Subscribers think they're paying for content, even though all they're really doing is defraying overhead. So the strength of the paywall argument is a consumer-mentality argument, not an "our content has tangible value absent advertising" argument."

The vast majority of visitors to paywalled sites — 90% — expect companies to provide at least some free content before they encounter the paywall, according to a survey of 200 new media professionals conducted by DigiCareer. A majority of those media professionals (52%) reported immediately leaving a site after encountering a paywall and 58% were unsure if they'd visit a site again after hitting the wall. Full results can be found here.