Sports fans should embrace the Denver Post’s new “pay wall”
“It’s easy enough to scoff at the traditional dailies and their aging business model and say that it serves them right that they are withering. The industry was too slow to react to their changing environment. But we can’t afford to lose them.”
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We all knew that it was coming.
On December 2, 2013 the Denver Post will roll out its first “pay wall” or paid digital subscription.
For current subscribers to the print edition (like me) the pay wall will be a non-concern. We will be able to register an account as one of the privileges of being an existing customer. But, for folks who do not take the paper but enjoy reading articles online, things are about to change. The Denver Post will no longer be working for free. I say it’s about time.
Now, before you freak out, please be aware of the following:
Critical breaking news will be OUTSIDE the pay wall – including the front page of the paper and the front pages of every individual section.
Obituaries, classifieds and articles linked to social media will also be free.
Readers will be granted access to twenty-five free articles per month on desktop and ninety-nine on mobile.
The new pay wall will really only affect heavy users of Denver Post digital content who do not subscribe to the paper. The community will not suffer in any way as a result of the Post resorting to this.
Digital First, the parent company of MediaNews Group, the owner of the Denver Post is among the final holdouts in the newspaper world to begin charging for online content. The firm has resisted making the move for years because management has been concerned that the pay model can stymie growth. The company sees the model as a temporary fix to a long-term problem. Newspapers are losing money. Digital First doesn’t believe that pay walls are the answer but it knows that it has to do something.
Sports fans should support this move – and should gladly pay the $12 per month for the full digital subscription.
The Denver Post offers something that the rest of the digital space does not – reporting. Yeah, there are some outlets covering the local teams who have “feet on the ground”. Denver Stiffs covers the Nuggets very well and Mile High Report does a fine job with Broncos, but those outlets do not have salaried reporters covering the beats the way the Post does. As a rule the blogosphere repurposes the information originally sourced by the traditional dailies to fill out our pages. We can provide entertaining content and opinion but the actually stories have to come from somewhere. In Denver that somewhere is the Denver Post.
This is a sports site. It’s not a place to discuss the importance of journalism when it comes to keeping our courts and our local politicians in check. That’s a separate matter. Sports reporting is a microcosm of the issue, though. The Post dedicates at least one “beat writer” to cover each professional team. In the case of the Broncos the Post has two on salary. In addition to the journalists covering the individual teams the paper employs columnists Woody Paige, Terry Frei, Benjamin Hochman and Mark Kiszla. Without all of these eyes following the every move of the local teams, fans would at the mercy of national outlets to keep tabs on the moves they make.
It’s easy enough to scoff at the traditional dailies and their aging business model and say that it serves them right that they are withering. The industry was too slow to react to their changing environment. But we can’t afford to lose them. To subscribe to the Denver Post’s digital product will cost about as month per month as three coffees at Starbucks. It’s a small price to pay to help preserve our last local newspaper.
Denver sports fans should embrace the new Denver Post pay wall knowing that they are helping to sustain the kind of local reporting that only the paper can provide. We don’t want to find ourselves reliant on USA Today and Yahoo to give us our Broncos, Avalanche, Nuggets and Rockies news, much less our CU, CSU, DU and Air Force news. Besides, once the dailies are out of the way who is to say that the national outlets won’t start charging for content, too?
The best things in life may be free, but the best reporting isn’t. Someone is paying for it and has been all along. Now that somebody is asking you to help. Just a little.
