We’re not the bad guys when we ask for support

We see the comment on our newspaper’s Facebook pages.

“Why do I have to pay to read this?”

On our website, SaltWire. com, we have a mixture of free and premium content.

Much of the content is free. In fact, right now the majority of it is free because all of the COVID-19 public health and information coverage from all of our SaltWire.com publications in Atlantic Canada is free. As it should be.

But our website also has what we call premium content.

What is that?

Premium content are stories that are exclusive to our SaltWire Network newsrooms. They also include stories in which journalists — like myself

— put extra effort into, through our writing, research and multimedia aspects, such as videos, photo galleries, maps, design and the list goes on. Each month people get three free premium stories. After that they are asked to subscribe.

Why is that?

It’s because we, like other businesses, need revenue. Times have changed and the newspaper industry is facing challenges. It has been for years. While there are people who still like to spread their newspaper on their kitchen table daily or weekly to read it, a growing segment of the population gets their news online.

People used to clip newspaper articles and put them on their fridge. Now they post shared links on their social media Facebook and Twitter pages.

If fewer people are purchasing subscriptions to our print editions, and advertising drops off too, we run the risk of not having printed versions of the newspapers anymore, or of losing staff so there are fewer stories online. I have friends who worked at various newspapers within Nova Scotia who have all lost their jobs over the past six months for that very reason. Their newspapers are gone.

Some people say, “So what? We’ll just get our news somewhere else.”

But the majority of time the local stories newsrooms like ours tell — from Cape Sable Island, Yarmouth, Tusket, Shelburne, Port Maitland, Barrington, Carleton, Church Point, Weymouth, Barton,

Sable River, Pubnico, Digby, Meteghan, etc., etc., etc. — you won’t find somewhere else.

People pay to purchase our newspapers and for that we are very grateful. But online, a lot of people expect that all of that same information should be free. The problem is, as a business, if we are giving everything away for free we won’t be able to pay our bills or our staff.

We’re not different from other businesses that charge for their products and services. When you go to a café, you expect to be charged for your coffee and food. When you purchase groceries, you expect there is going to be a cost. You don’t expect a mechanic to do five hours or work on your vehicle for free. You don’t expect the bookstore to let you walk out of their stores without paying for the novel you hold in your hand. You know a movie theatre will charge. You know a restaurant will hand you a bill.

We may not like the prices we are charged, but no one expects in the majority of cases in our everyday life that there won’t be a charge.

And yet when a newspaper asks people to support us by purchasing a digital subscription we are made to be the bad guys. How dare we. We are shameful. And the comments get worse from there.

I can’t tell you how demoralizing it can be at times to see people so annoyed and angry at the suggestion that our work is of value, or that the job we do matters. Premium content is supposed to represent some of our best work and yet people don’t read it because they don’t want to pay.

At times it makes you wonder, why did I write it at all?

I’m not writing about this looking for sympathy. Then again, maybe I am.

Shameless plug: The cost of a digital subscription is $1 a week for the first year, which gives you unlimited access to two dozen publications on our website. And if you have a print subscription you have digital access as part of that; you just have to set up your username and password.

When we ask people to support local journalism it’s not just because we want to, it’s also because we need to. Without public support we simply can’t exist.

Right now we are all going through really hard times. There are businesses that are struggling.

We understand that. We’re one of them.

So to answer the question, “Why do I have to pay to read this?”

You don’t have to. But we do hope you want to.