Thursday, March 28, 2013

Newspaper paywalls ... roadblocks to linking

For the past seven years, I have written, researched, and blogged about politics, life, homeschooling, the mountains, the beach, and everything in between. The bulk of my writing has been political.

As with anything, that involves research on the internet where I would add links to various publications that provide useful information and sometimes include quotes. Lately, however, more and more newspapers have begun installing paywalls, and that has led to a dilemma. I don't want to link to articles that cannot be accessed by readers from the four corners of the world. It is too expensive and cumbersome to subscribe to every site out there.

Today I once again ran into this dilemma. I would like to include a link to the Staunton News Leader for an issue I am writing about but it is useless since the article is not publicly accessible. I reluctantly decided to omit it and find alternate local news sources to use.

I wrote an article last year about this issue when the Waynesboro News-Virginian first began charging for access and, while most understand why publications are using paywalls, it does not make it any less frustrating for those who are writing and would like to link.

No comments: