"Let's enjoy it while it lasts" was a familiar reaction on social media when The New York Times announced last week that it would temporarily disable its paywall to mark World Press Freedom Day. The excitement of many users points toward a key development in online news of recent years: the rise of paywalls across online news sites, as publishers around the world try to find new, sustainable business models in order to make up for the revenue shortfall caused by a rapidly changing business environment.

Paywalls may seem to be everywhere these days, but how widespread are they in fact? This is the question Lucas Graves and I tried to address when we set out to survey the current pay model landscape across six European countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom) and the U.S.…