PENINSULA DAILY NEWS will start charging frequent users of its website, www.peninsuladailynews.com, beginning Monday.
But home-delivery print subscribers will not be charged and will have unrestricted free access to all of the PDN’s digital products.
Under the new system, nonsubscribers to the PDN’s print edition will have to pay after viewing a set number of free articles per month.
The system will begin with 20 free articles in April, and website users will be offered a 30-day digital-only trial subscription for 99 cents.
After the trial, plans will start at $7.95 a month for an annual digital-only subscription, which includes unlimited access to content at www.peninsuladailynews.com, the North Olympic Peninsula’s No. 1 website for news and online local advertising.
The PDN’s website averages 1.6 million page views a month.
Home-delivery subscribers to the print Peninsula Daily News — whether they get it Sunday through Friday, or only Friday and Sunday — will enjoy unlimited free access to the website.
If you are a home-delivery subscriber, go to www.peninsuladailynews.com beginning Monday for instructions on how to sign up for free access.
Previously, all content at www.peninsuladailynews.com was available free.
Urgent news stories of community importance, classified and display ads, obituaries, www.peninsuladailynews.com’s home page, Peninsula Calendar, Peninsula Poll, Hot Links, photo galleries, special sections and PDN customer service pages will be placed outside the paywall, meaning they won’t count toward a user’s free monthly access limit.
Also unaffected for now will be the PDN’s e-Edition, a page-by-page electronic replica edition that operates under a separate subscription program.
“Beginning Monday, we’re joining more than 500 newspapers nationwide — including The Seattle Times and the weekly Port Townsend Leader — that charge for their digital content,” said John Brewer, PDN publisher and editor.
“For years we’ve forced our print subscribers to pay for content and then turned around and gave it away for free to everybody else.
“Now our print subscribers will not only benefit from getting the newspaper delivered to their homes or businesses, they will have access to all of our digital platforms on any device, any time they want it, at no extra charge.”
The weekly Sequim Gazette, part of a newspaper group that includes the PDN, also will go to a metered pay system next week for its website, www.sequimgazette.com.
The change will be effective Wednesday. Print subscribers to the Gazette will continue to have free access to its website.
The weekly Forks Forum, sister paper to the PDN and Sequim Gazette, will not be participating in the pay system at this time for its website, www.forksforum.com.
For more information, email Brewer at jbrewer@peninsuladailynews.com or phone him at 360-417-3500.
