Pay walls: To charge or not to charge

The owner of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazzette thinks a pay wall is just fine.

Hussman said that their site went behind a pay wall, and that he got a "tremendous" number of complains from people who said all this information should be free.

"We don't understand how we can spend 10 million a year editing gathering and reporting the news and give it away for free," Hussman "We don't understand that."

He said that their decision to make people pay online has not placed them at a competitive disadvantage, and that they compare favorably to other area newspapers. He said they only lost about one third of their total page views.

They don't give away local sports and school board meeting information, but they put things online that the don't have room for in the newspaper, such as photo galleries, video clips and free classified ads.

"Today we have more audience than all the television stations in our area," he said. "We have lots of free content, its just none of what is in the newspaper."

By Andy Medici