Washington Post considering a paywall for 2013

The Washington Post may follow in the New York Times' and other newspapers footsteps and build a paywall around its online news in 2013.

The paper reported that according to "a person familiar with the plans," the Post is nearing a decision to debut digital subscribtions and a charge for articles once readers surpass a certain number. The homepage and section fronts would still be available for free.

The Post is also considering upping the newsstand price of its print edition, as it stares down an operating loss of $56.3 million for the first nine months of 2012, a 14 percent decline in revenue to $160.7 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

"We are obviously looking at paywalls of every type," said Don Graham, the chairman of Washington Post Co. "But the reason we haven't adopted them yet is that we haven't found one that actually adds profits immediately. But we're going to continue to study every model of paywall and think about that, as well as thinking about keeping it free."

Over 300 American papers now charge readers for access digital content, including Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy, MediaNews, E.W. Scripps, Media General papers now owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, as well as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Poynter reported. 

The sites allow readers an average of 11 articles a month before they have to pay up. 

The paywall, however, would not be put in place until next summer at the earliest, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

More from GlobalPost: The New York Times paywall gets higher, cuts amount of free views in half