Portsmouth Daily Times Now Charging to Read Online Articles
The Portsmouth Daily Times is now charging users to read the articles on their website. Readers are allowed one free article a month; then, they’ll see this screen pop-up.
If a user provides their email address, they can receive two additional articles. Complete access to the site will cost $11.99 a month for a digital subscription or $17.99 monthly for a combination of the digital subscription and physical copies of the two weekly print editions of the newspaper.
Charging readers to access a website is known as a paywall, and it is standard practice these days for the online editions of most newspapers.
Subscriptions to print editions of newspapers have declined to the point where even large cities only offer one or two print editions a week of the newspaper, and many cities no longer even have print editions.
Advertising revenue is also declining due to competition from various websites, streaming, and social media, making it impossible for news sites to generate enough revenue to operate websites from advertising alone.
Proponents of the paywall argue that it is only fitting for readers to pay people for the work of covering the news, while others fear it cuts low-income readers off from trustworthy news sources.
Paywalls have already been put in place by other local news outlets, from Piketon to Ironton and over to Ashland and Huntington.