Abstract
This paper explores and identifies the content which news publishers consider worthy of placing behind a paywall. It compares online news commodification in the leading Australasian financial newspapers—the Australian Financial Review (AFR) and the National Business Review (NBR). Based on a quantitative content analysis of 614 articles published on the AFR’s and NBR’s homepages, the paper finds that publishers consider hard news and opinion pieces as the most valuable news commodity. These were the most frequently paywalled content of the papers. Both papers allowed greater access to technology news to attract audiences and to enhance their digital subscriptions. Additionally, NBR offered free access to its routine market news, whereas AFR paywalled the same content. There were some major differences between the papers: AFR locked 86 per cent of its content compared to NBR’s 41 per cent. The findings of the paper suggest that ownership structures, corporate finances, and publication models need to be considered when examining newspaper paywalls.
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