The COVID-19 pandemic not only marked global events in 2020, but also left its marks on news media functioning. The Coronavirus has become a thematic agenda of the newscast of the last month in global, national, and regional media. While radio and TV stations came up with special programmes on the subject of the pandemic, in newspapers, on the Internet and in mobile applications there appeared specialized sections and columns, in which media published news items thematically related to the Coronavirus. Some TV stations made their archives and other usually paid services available free of charge, and mobile operators offered their customers unlimited data. However, the approach to charging a toll for Internet content has also changed. While some media made all content available to their readers, others unlocked, for instance, news items and various content devoted to the pandemic (comments, analyzes, information graphics, etc.). The purpose of the paper is to point out different approaches to the strategy of imposing a charge on the content of news websites during the COVID-19 pandemic, on the example of the most widely read Slovak news portals