Back in June, we started requiring people to pay for digital access to our news content.
It’s not expensive – $7 per month for unlimited digital access – and you can read a few stories for free before being asked to pay. That is ONLY $7 (a whopping $6 if you want to get the Sunday paper delivered to your home).
It wasn’t long after that something interesting happened. A thread on a sports forum appeared, detailing how to read the paper online and avoid paying for the content.
My question is this. If we (or any site) charge for content, and a person bypasses that fee (as we know some do), isn’t that theft?
It is a funny thing. Years ago at another operation, we caught a guy stealing papers. He’d put his 50 cents in the machine and take 20 or so papers at a time, then sell them. He didn’t consider it theft, but in my view, he was stealing $9.50 from us every time he took 20 papers for the price of one.
It is no different online. If a person figures out how to bypass our payment system, and reads the paper for free – deliberately not paying for it – then that person is stealing $7/month from us, at least in my view.
And I’ll be honest, I don’t buy the argument that the content isn’t worth anything. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t even try to read it, but those who say it is worthless are usually the ones trying hardest to bypass the content.
It is sort of like saying you want to eat a Big Mac for free because you don’t like them.
Paying for our content is important for two reasons:
- I do feel it has value and have placed a price on it.
- All revenue sources are important, and not paying for it risks the jobs of the more than 35 full-time employees at the DNJ.
Whether it is the DNJ or another paper, keep in mind, if you bypass their required payment for access, you essentially are stealing from them.