JOHNSTON Press has taken the plunge.
The local newspaper group, which has more than 200 titles in the UK, will ask readers of the Northumberland Gazette, Whitby Gazette and Southern Reporter to pay for their online content.
Subscribers can pay £5 for full access during the three-month trial, the equivalent of 40 pence per day.
Another three of the group's papers, the Carrick Gazette, Worksop Guardian, and Ripley and Heanor News, are undergoing a separate trial.
Bizarrely, the stories on their websites have just an introductory paragraph before readers are diverted to the print edition for the full account.
The outcome of the trials is sure to be followed closely by industry chiefs eager to learn if they can make money from their websites.
Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp, is among the interested parties ahead of his plan to charge for the online versions of The Sun and The Times from April next year.
A major problem for the papers is the prevalence of the BBC's 'free' website.
The Beeb is unlikely to justify charging for its content given that the public already shell out £142.50 a year for the licence fee.
While the BBC's local news pages are patchy at best, its coverage of a story of national prominence would dwarf the output of anything from a local newspaper in terms of quantity and quality.
Herein lies the true problem. Good local journalists with the ability to produce a standard to rival the BBC are being made redundant almost every week.
Others, like me, cannot even get a look in. The remaining reporters work ever-increasing hours trying to fill the same number of pages as previously.
The sad truth is that few local papers have a website worth charging for.
Most of the sites which I have seen upload the story from the print edition without any additional analysis or comment.
But that is not the fault of the under pressure news desk staff.
It is the short-sighted company chiefs just looking to make their next buck who are really to blame for the slow death of a once-proud industry.
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