The OC Weekly is launching an online paywall, which
means that readers who want to browse the newspaper online must buy a
subscription or pay a daily rate to have access to the website beginning
this week.
A limited amount of content such as medicinal marijuana stories, movie listings,
the calendar of events and gratuitous plugs for all the lectures, books, and media appearances by Weekly Mexican-in-Chief Gustavo Arellano will remain
free.
The Weekly is one of the latest U.S. newspapers to charge for stories, photographs and videos posted
on its website. The Orange County Register
announced a paywall just last week. But the Weekly is the only alternative newspaper in the country whose print edition will remain free while charging for its online presence.
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“It is unfair to our non-paying (print) subscribers that someone else is
getting our content for free online,” said Arellano. “Why should any pendejo outside of Orange County easily access our paper and boost our national presence, while our print readers must suffer the ignominy of asking for the OC Weekly at their nearest news rack, only to be given OC Metro?
Full subscribers will have full access to all stories behind the
paywall. Subscribers who pay for just the Sunday paper, weekends or
other days, will have free access to the website only on those days.
Non-subscribers who want to read online will pay $2, which will give
them access to all content for 24 hours. After appearing online for 90
days, however, all content will be available at no charge to readers, because by that point, the Register and Los Angeles Times would have already ripped off the Weekly's coverage and made it old news.
More details to come…
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook–but be ready to pay!
