Another week, and another newspaper opts for a paid-content model: French daily Le Figaro has now announced price tiers for its delayed, previously announced offering, which will go live on Monday…

But, instead of hoisting up a paywall around all its news conent, Le Fig is going for a freemium model, charging only for extras like newsletters, a digital copy of its printed edition, social media features - and booking you a dinner table. The new features come in three tiers, but spokesperson Antoine Daccord tells paidContent:UK: “News will be free forever...”

—Connect (free) will include emailed newsletters, enable comments on stories, and let users create a personalised front page.

—Select (€8pm) includes all in Connect plus access to in-depth news. It will feature articles from the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) translated in to French, access to the digital edition of the paper, and 30 articles per month from the archive. It also gives access to a social network of sorts, linking you up with other readers that have similar interests to your own. And it includes some citizen journalism, too: subscribers can publish their own stories. As Daccord describes it, “Comment is free, but writing news is not.”

—Business (€15pm) includes all of the above, but extends the archive to 90 stories per month, plus two business newsletters. The social network element is more focused around business networking. And there is a concierge service for restaurant and travel reservations.

LeFigaro.fr says it has seven million unique visitors per month. It still remains to be seen how many of those seven million will be willing to pony up for the extra features.

“Information is available everywhere in abundance. But quality information that helps us to think and act, is rare,” writes Luc de Barochez, managing editor for Figaro.fr.

This follows a similar mixed model to Hamburger Abendblatt in Germany, which we wrote about last week. At that site, national news is free of charge but local features are behind a paywall.

Le Figaro is France’s oldest national newspaper, but it’s not the biggest daily—not by long shot. In what is a reverse trend from markets like the UK, where regional press has been hit the hardest in the print downturn, the honour of biggest-selling daily in France goes to Ouest France, which covers only Brittany, Normandy and Pays de la Loire. Circulation at Ouest France is around 800,000, compared to Le Monde’s current figure of 300,000.

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