Johnston Press will today begin to change for access to the online content for six of its local titles through the introduction of paywalls.

The six titles including the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News, the Whitby Gazette and Northumberland Gazette and well as Scottish titles the Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter will ask users to pay for a three-month online subscription to read full articles.

Johnston Press currently owns more than 300 papers in the UK and it is expected that should this scheme, similar to that already taken up by The Financial Times, be successful, it will be rolled out across all titles.

The company is the first news paper publisher to take on such a trial which was expected to be implemented earlier this year by Rupert Murdoch.