Adevărul Holding will introduce a pay-wall to its products’ online content

Peter Imre, General Manager Adevărul Holding, company owned by Dinu Patriciu, announced, on Wednesday, that the press trust will introduce a pay-wall for trust’s products’ online content, following the international trend.

Adevărul Holding is owned by Dinu Patriciu and has in its portfolio dailies (Adevărul, Adevărul de seară), a tabloid (Click!), magazines (Dilema veche, Dilemateca, Foreign Policy Romania) and the Ukrainean daily Blik. Adevărul Holding is also publishing the Romanian edition of Forbes, Forbes România.

This announcement was made after the british publications The Times and Sunday Times relaunched their sites, introducing an online access fee starting June 1st.

Although it might be following an international trend, this movement will most probably mean a decrease or Adevarul’s number of online readers,as Romanian press industry isn’t in a stage of development that can be compared to the press in UK or other big European countries.

Even in the countries with a press industry extremly developed, the big newspapers are reluctant to introducing taxes for their online content, most of them analysing the possibility of a mix access, with a pay wall only for exclusive and premium content. As an example, The Guardian’s managers are rejecting the pay wall option and plead for free online content to keep the readers.

The announcement made by Adevarul Holding generated a series of reactions in Romanian blogosphere, most media specialist and journalists foreseeing a bleak future for the company.