2500 Fonterra executives sign up to NBR Online

New Zealand’s biggest export company, Fonterra, has become the latest corporate to subscribe to the NBR Online pay web site.

Fonterra’s 16,000-strong payroll includes 2500 executives who earn more than $100,000.

The company joins more than 20 other major corporate, universities and government departments whose staff have access to exclusive NBR Online content.

Fonterra’s addition comes on top of individual executive subscribers who are currently joining at a rate of 280 per month.

The instant reader feedback on the site’s “comments” service has been one reason cited for growth rate. The site eschews the conventional “moderator” intervention on its readers opinions adopted by other internet news services.

The subscriber growth comes in the wake of record user numbers.

Since January 24 the unique New Zealand users have averaged 40,098 a week and domestic page impressions 173,311 by Nielsen’s independent measure.

In the six months leading up to the launch of NBR Online’s paywall in July 2009, the free site averaged 26,895 domestic unique browsers a week and 135,806 impressions.

The pay model has defied some media analysts and bloggers scepticism of the paywall model.

They wrongly predicted a fall in NBR Online’s traffic. The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Australian Financial Review have also reported strong paid content numbers.

NBR Online offers a mix of free and paid comment.

The growth of NBR Online has had little impact on the National Business Review newspaper, which last year retained or replaced 94% of its paying subscribers.

The website’s growth has also been powered by its investigative journalists who have broken a raft of groundbreaking business stories in the last 12 months, including one that led to the Serious Fraud Squad using draconian powers to seize a reporter’s interview notes during the South Canterbury Finance collapse. 

Other exclusive reports have followed strenuous campaigns to report court proceedings in the face of barristers’ constant efforts to suppress coverage.