Passage 6

　　Directions: For question 1—5, choose the most suitable paragraphs from the list A—G and fill them into the numbered boxes to form a coherent text. Paragraphs A and B have been correctly placed.

　　[A] Among national newspapers, paywalls are still rare, though the New York Times and the Times of London both have them. Most wallbuilding is being done by small local outfits. “Local newspapers are more vital to their communities, and they have less competition,” explains Ken Doctor, the author of “Newsonomics”

　　[B] The paywallbuilders tend to report a drop in online traffic. But not usually a steep drop, and not always an enduring one. Oklahomas Tulsa World, which started demanding subscriptions from heavy online readers in April, reports that traffic in August of this year was higher than a year earlier. One possible explanation, odd as it may sound, is that readers are still discovering its website. “We have paper subscribers who want nothing to do with the internet,” explains Robert Lorton, the Tulsa Worlds publisher. Fewer than half of the newspapers print subscribers have so far signed up for unrestricted free access to the website. Other newspapers report similar proportions.

　　[C] That suggests the game is not over. The earlyadopting young abandoned print newspapers long ago. But many newspapers have a surprisingly large, if dwindling, herd of paying customers. They will milk them as hard as they can.

　　[D] On October 10th the Baltimore Sun will join a fastgrowing club. The newspaper will start tracking the number of times people read its stories online; when they reach a limit of 15 a month, they will be asked to pay. Local bloggers may squawk about content wanting to be free. But perhaps not as much as they would have done a few months ago. There is a sense of inevitability about paywalls. In April 2010 PaidContent, an online publication, found 26 American local and metropolitan newspapers charging for online access. Several times that number now do so. More than 100 newspapers are using Press+, an online payment system developed in part by a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Media News, a newspaper group, put up two paywalls in 2010; it has erected 23 so far this year.

　　[E] Why the rush? One reason is that building paywalls has become easier: Press+ and Googles One Pass will collect online subscriptions on behalf of newspapers, skimming a little off the top. The popularity of Apples iPad is another explanation. Many newspapers have created paidfor apps. There is little point doing that if a tablet user can simply read the news for free on a web browser. But the big push comes from advertising—or the lack of it.

　　[F] The most ambitious architects are in Europe. Since May Slovakia has had a virtual national paywall—a single payment system that encompasses nine of the countrys biggest publications. Slovaks who want to read news online pay 2.90 ($3.90) a month, which is split between the newspapers according to a formula that accounts for where people signed up and how heavily they use each publications website. Piano Media, which built the system, plans to launch another national paywall in Europe early next year.

　　[G] Jim Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, says American newspapers used to abide by an “8020” rule. That is, 80% of their revenues came from advertising and 20% came from subscriptions. Those days are over. Newspaper advertising, print and online combined, has crashed from $9.6 billion in the second quarter of 2008 to $6 billion in the second quarter of 2011, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Few believe it will ever fully recover. So the race is on to build a subscription business, both in print (cover prices are going up) and online.

　　1→A→2→3→4→B→5