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Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner has walked back his comments from last week about plans to install a paywall at Politico, which Axel Springer acquired this month.
Axios first reported this development on Thursday, citing audio it received of a company-wide call with Politico employees on Thursday.
During the Q&A portion, when asked if a paywall would be installed, Döpfner said, “The answer is no. Absolutely not. No decision has been made. My answer honestly was very unfortunate. It was my mistake.”
Politico is currently free, though it offers subscription services for special coverage of certain industries such as the lobbying sector.
“The immediate answer — do you implement a paywall? I said no but then I elaborated how important paid content is for us and I believe in that,” said Döpfner. “That is actually the main reason we acquired Politico because it was based so much on a subscription model.”
Döpfner remarked that a paywall should be called “paid content or subscriptions … because I truly think — apart from
“Whether concretely in the case of Politico, the B to C [business to consumer] part of the business should be either partly subscription or completely subscription-driven, that is something we would like to discuss with you and be assured — we would never — if we had made the decision or think we should make the decision, announce it publicly before we speak to you. Our approach would be to ask you what do you think is right,” he said.
Döpfner also said, “Basically you decide and we would discuss it with you and if you have good reasons not to do it, we don’t do it and if you want to try it, we try it, but no decision has been made and that was just because of my unclear communication for it … I cannot blame the Wall Street Journal for it, only me.”