Key insights into newspaper subscription models in the U.S.

As publishers around the world continue to search for the right revenue model, new analysis from the States reveals the extent to which digital subscriptions remain at the heart of many news media business strategies.

Of the 98 daily newspapers in the USA with a combined daily circulation (across print, digital and branded editions) of over 50,000 readers, 77 of them (79 percent) use some sort of digital subscription model. 

However, the research – which was conducted by Alex T. Williams, a 2015 Research Fellow at the American Press Institute (API) and a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication – also demonstrates considerable variances in the subscription models that are being deployed.

America's next top (subscription) model

Metered models are, by some margin, the most popular digital subscription system used by American news publishers. 

"Of the 98 newspapers we looked at, 62 papers used meters," Williams observed, "which is nearly three times as many as those [21 papers] not requiring a digital subscription."

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