Several TC Media-owned community newspapers in Nova Scotia have adopted a metered paywall model, joining a growing number of publications requiring readers to pay for content.
The King’s County Advertiser, Kings County Register and NovaNewsNow.com family of papers – which includes the Yarmouth Vanguard, Digby Courier and Annapolis County Spectator websites – adopted the metered paywall model on Monday.
Readers can choose between two subscription packages: the All Access pass, which includes the print edition and all digital content; or the Digital Duo, a $3.99 per month package that provides access to online content and each newspaper’s e-edition.
Non-subscribers will be limited to six articles, photos or videos per month.
“The reality is, it costs a great deal of money to produce top-quality news content and we need to find ways to support that,” said Don Brander, the Maritimes group publisher at TC Media, in a statement announcing the paywall introduction. “We no longer can afford to give our content away for free. That business model simply is not sustainable any longer.”
The news comes just one week after TC Media announced that it was ceasing publication of 20 Quebec weeklies, resulting in approximately 80 job losses. The decision prompted the Canadian Association of Journalists to issue a statement saying it “continues to be concerned” about the closure of Canadian news publications.
According to Newspapers Canada’s 2013 Daily Newspaper Circulation Report, 13 newspapers put up a digital paywall last year, bringing the total number of papers charging for digital access to 33.
