This is not the best moment to be erecting a wall of any sort but the time has come to put a paywall — neither huge nor beautiful — around new content on The Cape Breton Spectator.
Great Wall of China. (Photo by Nicolas Perrault III, Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
My stats show me that there are enough people reading the Spectator each week to make it viable, were they willing to subscribe to the Spectator.
Making more money is not just about me personally making a living (although, obviously, it’s about that), it’s also about making this a better publication. I know it’s cheeky to call yourself the “Cape Breton” Spectator if your focus is chiefly the CBRM and I would like to fix that by paying freelancers to write about what’s happening elsewhere on the Island.
I have been fortunate enough to have people volunteer to write for me and I am fully cognizant of that fortune, but it would be nice to be able to pay my contributors something — exploiting the talents of your friends and acquaintances without rewarding them is not a sustainable business model.
It would also be nice to be able to do more reporting. As it stands, I do all that work myself; if I could pay other reporters for additional content (as Tim Bousquet’s Examiner does) it would improve the quality of the Spectator immensely.
The Spectator is part of the brave new world of independent, online journalism; one experiment among many as we try to discern what journalism will look like now that the old advertising-based models are breaking down. I love what I’m doing and the response I’ve had from those of you have already subscribed, even without a paywall (bless you) makes me think there’s a future in this.
Please consider being a part of that future. Subscribe to The Cape Breton Spectator and support a local, independent news source.
P.S. The plan is still to leave new content behind the paywall for a week, then make it available for free. But do you really want to wait?
P.P.S. If you have trouble registering or logging in, email me.
