另辟蹊径

　　The rapid rise of newspaper paywalls

　　付费阅读的大幅增长

　　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.

　　10月10日《巴尔的摩太阳报》将推出付费墙，这项业务时下正方兴未艾。该报将记录读者阅读的次数，超过每月15次的免费限额后读者将被要求付费。本地博主们可能会因此满腹牢骚，但是可能没有几个月之前的反应强烈 。付费墙的推广具有必然性。

　　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. MediaNews, a newspaper group, put up two paywalls in 2010; it has erected 23 so far this year.

　　2010年4月，网络发行商PaidContent提供26家美国本地、都市报付在线费阅读服务。超过100种报纸使用名为Press+的在线支付系统，某种程度上来说该系统是有华尔街日报的前出版商推出的。2010年媒体新闻集团推行了2款付费墙，今年迄今为止已建立了23款。

　　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”.

　　尽管纽约时报和伦敦时报都推行了付费墙，但是国家级刊物的付费墙却寥寥无几。设置付费墙的往往是一些本地小报，他们对当地社区是至关重要的，因而他们所面临的外部竞争相对较少。Newsonomics的作者Ken Doctor如是说。

　　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