Nation Media Adds Paywall on News Articles in Radical Shift

The logo for Nation Media Group's new website
The logo for Nation Media Group's new website
File

The Nation Media Group’s platform Nation.Africa has added a paywall on its news content, requiring one to have a paid subscription before reading most of the stories.

The charges — discounted at 50% for the first six months — start at Ksh10 for daily access to Ksh750 for the year.

In a radical shift of its business model, the media house is using a combination of a metered and hard paywall.

First-time visitors who are not registered will access up to five free articles before they are hit with a metered paywall.

After registration on the platform, they can then access up to ten more free articles before the hard paywall kicks in where they will require a paid subscription to read more articles.

Nation.Africa's subscription charges as at 9th February 2021

All Prime content, as well as news articles older than 7 days, will automatically be behind the hard paywall.

In the past five months, the media house has added 230,000 registrations, 100,000 listeners on its podcasts and 10,000 plays on its puzzles section.

Instead of paying for a single article, the website has opted for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly subscriptions for unlimited access to articles. 

One-time plans, as well as recurring options that auto-renew have also been introduced and payment, can be made using M-Pesa and credit cards.

During the paywall launch held yesterday at the Windsor Country Club, Nation Media Group’s CEO Stephen Gitagama lauded the media house for the new shift.

“We are gradually moving our business model from relying on advertising to a reader-revenue model”, Gitagama stated.

The media house promises in-depth investigative reporting as well as thoughtful opinion from the continent and beyond.

Screenshot of a successful subscription on Nation.Africa's paywall as at 9th February 2021