Johnston Press is charging for local online news from today (30 November).

Publisher Johnston Press is charging visitors to three of its newspaper websites, asking for a subscription payment of £5 for three months access to “premium” content.

From today (30 November), readers of the Northumberland Gazette, the Southern Reporter in Scotland and the Whitby Gazette websites will only be able to view the first few words of a story before they will be asked to pay £5 quarterly for all premium content on the site.

Johnston Press says it produces valuable content and is not getting sufficient value from giving it away free on the internet.

Northumberland Gazette Editor Paul Larkin said: “It is exciting for us as journalists to be at the forefront of this venture. All eyes in the media world are on us!”

Alongside the trial involving the “paywall” system, three other Johnston titles – the Carrick Gazette, Worksop Guardian and Ripley and Heanor News will be directing readers back to the newspaper after a summary of each story.

Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news – in an industry where online advertising revenues are failing to cover the costs of gathering the news and paying journalists fairly.

In its Interim Management Statement earlier this month, Johnston Press admitted a continued fall in advertising revenue, and clearly hopes that this move will bring in much-needed revenue.

On a national level, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is to install its own paywall for the online versions of The Sun and The Times as early as next year, and The Financial Times already charges a subscription for full access to its web content.