Paying for news and information
Some say this is a golden age of journalism, as readers have access to a broader variety of information than ever before.
Newspapers from every corner of the country and, indeed, the world, are just a click away on the World Wide Web. The days are long gone when you had to visit a newsstand or book shop to get week-old, out-of-town newspapers from other parts of the country, or you had to contact a newspaper’s circulation office and see if they could send you a certain edition through the mail. Even then, the newspaper would sometimes land in your mailbox in shreds, thanks to the vagaries of it being delivered cross-country.
All too little of the information that is so readily available is being paid for by the consumers who are devouring it, however. Though there are those Internet utopians out there who blithely proclaim that “information wants to be free,” the costs of gathering that information are not negligible. Reporters with skills and expertise to ferret out data that can point to a larger story or trend must be compensated, along with the writers who offer insights on sports, the critics who offer seasoned judgments on the arts or photographers who capture the images that provide an entry point for many stories.
Starting this week, the Observer-Reporter will be instituting a paywall for its website. It will be joining other newspapers, both large and small, that have instituted similar measures to protect their content. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both have paywalls, as do a number of newspapers in this region, such as the Butler Eagle, the Herald-Standard in Uniontown and The Beaver County Times. Visitors to the Observer-Reporter’s site will be able to view a limited number of pages per month for free, and then they will have to pay for anything beyond that. Subscribers to the Observer-Reporter’s print edition will continue to have free access to the newspaper’s website and electronic edition.
The paywall idea is not new, but, for us, it’s an idea whose time has come.