San Francisco paper took $500,000 with paywall before taking it down

With the San Francisco Chronicle having dropped its paywall after just four months, one of its former executives has been talking about the problems of charging for content.

Phil Bronstein, one-time Chronicle editor who now chairs the board of the California-based Centre for Investigative Reporting, was interviewed here on Bloomberg TV.

Interesting revelation: "My understanding from people who work there is that they [Hearst Corp] made probably close to $500,000 during the course of that four months."

Interesting comment: "Paywalls are primarily there to maintain the base that you have - older readers like me, people who aren't necessarily going to be around in another 10 years. We're not the future of news organisations."

Even more interesting opinion: "It's not just the business model that's broken, it's also the journalism model that's broken because, over the last 30 or 40 years, we've lost touch with the audience we're supposed to be serving."