*This story was originally published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It has been lightly edited for style and republished here with permission.
Most people don’t pay for news. According to research from the Reuters Institute, the proportion of people that pay for online news across 20 countries is only 17% – a figure that has not changed for the last three years.
In our sample of countries, most of which are rich Western countries, we see a ‘winner-takes-most pattern’ where a few big upmarket newspapers dominate in their respective market. The New York Times, for example, dominates worldwide with over 10 million subscribers whereas newspapers like Le Monde and El País reach the peak in their countries with 500,000 and 300,000 subscribers respectively.
This makes Argentina an interesting case study as it’s a country with two publications attracting paying audiences in the midst of ongoing economic turmoil. Newspaper Clarín claims to have over 700,000 paid subscribers. Its main competitor, La Nación, has reported more than 375,000 digital paid subscribers surpassing big publications around the world.
In a country with high inflation, how did they manage to persuade their audiences to pay for news? I spoke to those in charge of building paying audiences for these newspapers to answer this question and learn how they've made progress.
Publishers use different models when it comes to controlling access to their digital content, from completely free access to hard paywalls. Our research on paying for news suggests there is no one-size-fits-all approach to encouraging people to pay for news, and what works will vary from market to market, and from brand to brand.
La Nación employs a metered paywall where readers have a quota on how many articles they can read for free. Once that quota is fulfilled, they are given the option to subscribe to read more articles. They also have what they call a ‘propensity model’, meaning their system analyses audience behavior and see what they are most interested in. Then they use that information to further encourage people to subscribe.
“If a person reads pieces on politics, economics and opinion and is within this group, this article counts double and the paywall pops up a little earlier than it would otherwise,” explains Agustina Roncaglione, digital subscriptions acquisition manager for La Nación.
The paper recently redesigned their paywall to entice more readers to subscribe. Part of this redesign involves making readers feel like they are part of La Nación already and putting the emphasis on the value of the product that they are already consuming rather than the price of it. Roncaglione says that the idea is to reduce some of the friction generated by a paywall.
“We let them choose between digital access to La Nación or a bundle including access to Club La Nación [a benefits program],” she says. “So we try to show our full value proposition.”
Clarín employs a similar metered paywall: free articles with readers paying to consume an unlimited offering. Javier Kraviez, chief digital officer, says that since the launch of their digital subscriptions seven years ago, they have experimented with different models to see what works best. As they started tracking audience behavior, they have been able to understand their audience better and to apply different tactics to different readers.
“As we got to know our readers better, we moved on to a more dynamic model, where we have different rules for different users. In parallel, we have articles that are only open to subscribers,” he says. “Today we have a combination of rules where there are readers who can read a certain amount of articles for free and where some articles are just for subscribers.”
Both Clarín and La Nación offer exclusive content to subscribers. Even though it represents a small percentage of their overall editorial offering, it is another incentive for audiences to pay.
The business team at La Nación works in conjunction with their newsroom to see how audiences engage with the content itself. Leonardo Leone, customer experience manager for subscribers at the newspaper, explains that these exclusive offerings go beyond just subscriber-exclusive articles and they include exclusive app features, events and newsletters.
“We created a series of events where the focus is to bring the newsroom a little closer to subscribers and where subscribers can interact with the interviewees,” he says. “The goal is to improve our value proposition. For example, we made a series of exclusive newsletters for subscribers, where you receive your favorite columns the day before they are published.”
At the time of this writing, a monthly subscription to La Nación costed ARS $7.800 ($6,5 USD) for the digital access package and ARS $11.800 ($9,8 USD) for package including benefits. Around 75% of subscribers pay the full price of either package while the rest pay a discount mostly due to corporate packages.
Clarín calls the percentage of people that pay the full subscription price “solid” and have a similar offering with the digital access subscription costing approximately $6 USD per month and $10 USD for the benefits program plus the digital access.
According to the IMF, the latest figure for inflation in Argentina is as high as 229%. So how do these newspapers deal with price increases in such a hostile environment? Clarín has raised its prices in response to persistent chronic inflation in the past. It generally increases prices three or four times per year. But this number may vary depending on the situation, Kraviez tells me.
“Complaints are inevitable, but we have the operational capacity to assess the level of dissatisfaction and act accordingly, using appropriate tools for retention,” says Kraviez.
La Nación has used quarterly increases too. In February 2024, they were forced to go further than usual, increasing prices by 50%. “These have been months in which we have applied higher discounts to contain the increase in churn,” explains Roncaglione. “For the last two months we have seen a stabilization in churn at approximately 2.10%, but we still have high rates of churn intentions and the retention team is managing those.”
Both La Nación and Clarín offer what they describe as a benefits club for subscribers. Aside from getting access to unlimited and exclusive content, subscribers also get additional perks.
Clarín offers a variety of discounts via their benefits program: from transportation to gas to escape rooms. Kraviez tells me that they have thousands of brands that adhere to their program, which is an extra reason for audiences to subscribe.
La Nación’s benefits program includes discounts in supermarkets, restaurants and movie theaters. “It allows us to reach audiences who are farther away from La Nación,” says Roncaglione.
This offering helps readers to justify their subscription. They can feel like they are getting some of their money back via the benefits the program offers. “That is why we have a very broad value proposition,” says Roncaglione. “This helps us to explain to them why they should subscribe,” says Roncaglione.
“We have learned that being wrong is part of the process. You have to be comfortable with the ambiguity, the constant beta testing,” says Kraviez. “Every day we test millions of things and most of them don't work. But we are proud of that because it means that we are testing. If we don't test, we can't move forward.”
Both newspapers are constantly testing tactics to see what works (or doesn’t work) when attracting new subscribers. Clarín, for example, had to rethink what are the ‘articles’ that make a reader into a subscriber and lean into them. Those articles, Kraviez says, are often opinion pieces or articles on politics or the economy and articles that help audiences make decisions on their everyday lives.
La Nación has also gone through some experiments – some more successful than others. For example, they have realized that Facebook is no longer a channel to generate new audiences and that their subscribers are not interested in face-to-face luxury sales events.
“We are constantly measuring channels where you go very far to try to attract subscribers. It is much more difficult to achieve engagement, so everything is more complex, but it has to do with this growth,” says Leone. “You have to go to places where people are not so close to you. This brings its own difficulties and it's more difficult to generate engagement in those places. But we are analyzing the data and making decisions on this.”
The bottom line from all these lessons, however, is that none of these tactics matter if the journalism is not good and relevant to audiences. Both newspapers say their journalism matters more than any of the perks they offer.
“What we offer to our subscribers is our journalistic value proposition: having rigorous, credible, verified, and well-structured information,” says Kraviez. “This is our promise.”
Despite the high cost of living and rising inflation in Argentina, these newspapers are attracting more subscribers than ever, surpassing the numbers of newspapers in richer and more stable economies.
“The key for us is to understand what part of our value proposition can support you, serve you, be valuable at any moment in the economic situation of the country,” says Roncaglione. “Being informed is really important and our content is quality content.”
Kraviez points to the enduring importance of Argentinian newspapers in setting the agenda for the public sphere despite the dominance of Big Tech.
“When the public agenda of a society is under the will of algorithms, democracy begins to break and that is very risky,” says Kraviez. “Journalism must be preserved. Leaving everything in the hands of algorithms is extremely dangerous.”
The percentage of people that trust news in Argentina is only 30%, according to our latest Digital News Report. The country, aside from its economic woes, also struggles with deep socio-political polarization, known to Argentinians as la grieta, which has been exacerbated by the election of President Javier Milei last year.
Despite inflation and polarisation, both newspapers firmly maintain their mission, shying away from external pressures. “The moral duty of the media is more relevant than ever: to challenge power and represent the interests of readers in the face of disinformation campaigns,” says Kraviez.
*Gretel Kahn is a Panamanian journalist. Previously, she worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Montreal covering daily news for radio and web.
