AS HURRICANE Sandy whipped up a fury on its approach to the eastern seaboard of the US on Sunday, television networks immediately dispatched anorak-clad reporters to windswept coastal spots, while social media editors fixated on whether pictures posted by users were real or fake. (Clue: if it has a shark in it, it’s fake.)

And one of the first actions both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal took was to drop their paywalls.

"A Region Crippled" read NYTimes.com's home page headline on Tuesday morning, above a live blog of the death toll, flooding and power outages, as it gave "free unlimited access" to rolling Superstorm Sandy coverage both on its website and through its apps. Print distribution was, understandably, somewhat curtailed.

This is not the first time that news groups’ journalism has, paradoxically, been considered too important to restrict to paying customers. At News International, for example, the Times has kept its paywall down for its award-winning “Cities Fit For Cycling” safety campaign, while the Sunday Times made the final report by

its foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria in February, available to non-subscribers.

But a public service ethos is not the only reason why news groups lower their paywalls – in June, the Times and the Sunday Times got out the promotional bunting and allowed free online access for coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee as part of a three-week editorial and marketing campaign.

The regularity with which paywalls are dismantled by news groups suggest that editors still hanker after the bigger, non-paying readerships that give their titles popular influence, while commercially-minded executives appear to be conceding that in order to sell their product, they do have to lift the blinds on the shop window every now and again.

The New York Times Company has less to worry about on that score than most. According to audited figures released on Tuesday, weekday circulation has increased 40 per cent for its flagship paper in the six months to September 30th – and the growth has been fuelled by digital subscriptions. While weekday print circulation is down 7 per cent over the past year, online circulation has more than doubled since then.

In a future where surviving news groups earn a decent slice of their revenues from digital, dropping a paywall may become no more remarkable than giving away free print copies to students and air passengers.