Up against the paywall

IS IT boom or doom in the news business? Headline-grabbing sums are being invested in online newspapers... Yet for those publications founded in the era of hot-metal type, advertising revenues continue to fall... American dailies lost around $30 billion in ad spending between 2005 and 2014, or 60% of the total... the main hope is to find ways of boosting online advertising and sponsorship. However, the digital-advertising revenue of America’s daily papers was $3.5 billion in 2014, just 11% more than in 2007... the New York Times’s chief executive, says the potential for native advertising is “limitless”. Some of his readers may beg to differ