The web readers of Newsday newspaper will have to start paying up if they want to continue with their subscriptions. This was announced as one of the money-generating plans by Cablevision Systems Corp, the owner of the service.

The company stated on Thursday that it is now in the transition of changing the site into a cable service that is locally focused.

Newsday was bought by Cablevision in May last year in a lucrative $650 million deal. The service covers Long Island, New York. This move was criticized last year considering the troubling newspaper market these days.

As of now, Cablevision has downgraded the value of Newsday to $402 million. This losses are projected this year with more readers opting for free news services online.

“Our goal was and is to use our electronic network assets and subscriber relationships to transform the way news is distributed,” said Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge.

“We plan to end the distribution of free Web content and make our news gathering capabilities a service for our customers,” he added.

Other media outlets are currently retrenching employees due to economic crisis and are also resorting to other cost-cutting measures.

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