In a statement released yesterday, the publishers said: The Glasgow-based Herald & Times Group pioneered charging for digital news in December 2011.
The thousands of paying digital subscribers to its online platform HeraldScotland now exceed the combined total of its sister print publications, The Herald and Sunday Herald.
Simultaneously, HeraldScotland’s audience has continued to grow significantly, even though the number of free articles for non-subscribers was reduced by 40% in August 2013.
Preliminary figures show the average monthly unique visitors for July-December 2013 were 1.425m - 16% higher than the first six months of 2013, when HeraldScotland was named by independent auditors ABC as the UK’s fastest-growing regional news site.
Building on 2013’s success, Herald & Times management have set aggressive digital targets for all editorial staff in 2014 to ensure readers receive the fastest and most reliable breaking news and sport.
Plasma screens tracking the most popular online stories, and their authors, are installed on the editorial floor.
(Subscription was introduced to HeraldScotland when the site relaunched in December 2011. Herald & Times was the first newspaper publisher in Scotland to charge for quality online journalism. The reading limit without subscription was reduced from 10 to just six articles per month from August 2013.)
