By Minal Bopaiah

Unlike The Washington Post, The Boston Globe’s new owner John Henry has kept a rather low profile since acquiring the site last summer. But a profile in Boston Magazine reveals that his presence has helped push a strategic overhaul of the publication.

In 2011, The Globe adopted a two-site solution, keeping Boston.com free while installing a hard paywall on BostonGlobe.com. That move led to dwindling revenues for The Globe, which was sold for $70 million by The New York Times Company, which had bought The Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993.

Now The Globe is looking to adopt a metered paywall like former sister site NYTimes.com.

This is probably the best hope for The Globe to start making a comeback. Hard paywalls have always been a hard sell for consumer sites, especially when so much breaking news is available not only for free online, but via television and social media sites.

Plus, the two-site solution often leads to consumer confusion, with readers of one site unaware of the other. We here at Subscription Site Central have experienced this first hand, with our premium members at Subscription Site Insider claiming they are unaware of our free blog and vice versa. (Editor’s Note: To remedy that, we will be re-launching as one freemium site on SubscriptionContent.net soon. Stay tuned!)

Of course, there are subscription content sites that can make a hard paywall work, especially B2B and database sites. But consumer publications are better off adopting a metered paywall or simply transitioning to tablet and mobile apps without publishing online.