Chico paper to charge

The Enterprise-Record and the York (Penn.) Daily Record, both owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, will allow free access to as many as 25 "premium" articles each month. But after that, readers will have to pay a fee, the amount yet to be determined. Subscribers to the print product will not be charged. Still to be decided, according to a Bloomberg story, is what the papers consider premium content. It all sounds pretty vague, much like the NYT's plan-in-progress to erect a pay wall for much of its content. The meter-type model most often cited is the Financial Times, which allows readers to access as many as 10 free articles monthly before charging for more. That's quite a different product - and audience - than the small-town Enterprise-Record. Is there enough content that readers will be willing to pay for? Seems unlikely, but that's what these experiments are about. MediaNews, which first announced plans for the two papers late last year, says that the pay system will launch by May. Depending on how successful this turns out to be, other Singleton papers will be waiting in the wings.