Forbes Magazine reports that the Gannett company plans to switch to a paywall system for all of its newspapers, with the exception of USA Today. The Asheville Citizen-Times is a Gannett company newspaper.
From Forbes Magazine:
The vogue for digital paywalls sweeping the news business has made it all the way to the top: Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is planning to switch over all of its 80 community newspapers to a paid model by the end of the year, it announced during an investor day held in Manhattan Wednesday.
If this means that one will have to pay to read the Asheville Mullet Wrapper on-line, then my response is a hearty ‘ha’, someone is hitting the bong too heavy.
Oh, and for all of you Facebook lovers out there, eager and willing to give up whatever anonymity remains in this surveillance society, read this:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/22/low-wage-facebook-contractor-leaks-secret-censorship-list/
…And the slow inevitable disappearance of Asheville’s daily newspaper continues. Now that they are increasingly irrelevant to the community, can we talk about what it will take to attract a real newspaper to this town?
I say we start our own paper. We can call it something cool, like Asheville Free Media or something.