Lord Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail, has spoken publicly of the possibility of introducing charges for access to ‘premium’ MailOnline content, but has categorically ruled out introducing a full paywall.
Speaking at Newsworks' Shift 2013 conference, the proprietor intimated that the Daily Mail & General Trust 'may' begin charging for Daily Mail Plus content, addong: “The birth of the Internet...[and] the growth of tablet and mobiles represents a sea-change for our business.
"But the core belief is that we should not stop people viewing Mail content."
The signal of intent follows a remarkable period of growth at MailOnline, which received 110,650,766 monthly unique browsers in February, generating a total of 2.41bn page views across its family of websites and apps.
This month The Daily Telegraph introduced a paywall for its website whilst The Sun has also made noises about charging for content at some point this year.