Guardian unveils online charges

The Guardian will charge online readers for some content from July - including a new digital edition of its newspaper and a version free from annoying adverts. Access to the main Guardian Unlimited network of sites will remain free, but if you want it stripped of adverts you must cough up £20 annually. The new digital version will be an exact online replica of the daily newspaper that can be browsed page by page costing £98.57 a year or £10 a month for The Guardian and £29 a year or £5 a month for the Observer. If you bought a copy of The Guardian from your corner shop Monday to Friday, it would set you back £143.55 a year. A charge of £12.50 a year will also be made for two of its email products - The Wrap, a daily digest of the UK papers and The Informer, the site's lunchtime news roundup. By the autumn, readers must register, but there are no plans to introduce a charge for the site - yet. Crossword fans will have to pay for the privilege of solving clues online - with subscribers gaining access to both the daily quick and cryptic crosswords, the weekly online-only Quptic and Saturday prize crosswords, plus the Observer Everyman cross word. Emily Bell, editor-in-chief at Guardian Unlimited, said: "We are absolutely committed to keeping the majority of GU free from both charge and registration, but the realities of web publishing mean that we also have to seek to maximise our revenues." According to figures from Nielson NetRatings, Guardian Unlimited is the UK's most popular newspaper website. However, this could be down to the fact many other papers such as The Financial Times, The Independent and The Times already charge for some online content.