Beginning Monday, statesboroherald.com, the website of the Statesboro Herald, is making a change.
For those of you who are e-subscribers or newspaper delivery subscribers who have registered to access the website, you will not notice anything different. You will continue to read whatever you want on statesboroherald.com as you always have. But for non-subscribers, you will see a difference.
In 2010, the Herald made a decision to put most of our staff-produced content — local news stories — behind what is called a pay wall. In other words, to read certain stories required a paid subscription. That subscription could be for as little as two days or as long a term as you wanted to pay. We did not put all our content behind the pay wall. Police Reports, Soundoff and local sports, for example, did not require a subscription to read.
On Monday, we are switching to what is called a “meter model.” What that means is all users of statesboroherald.com will have access to 10 free articles per month. After the 10th article, a pop-up window will ask you to subscribe and give you a link to a page where you can subscribe. If you choose not to subscribe, you will not have access to content on the web site for the duration of a particular month.
Again, if you already are a subscriber, the 10-article-per-month limit does not apply. You can read as much as you want, whenever you want.
One exception is locally-produced video. Video shows on statesboroherald.com like Eagles Nest, Prep Sports Blitz, Studio Statesboro and the Statesboro Herald Report never have required a subscription to watch and will not as we move forward into the meter model. Please watch as many video shows as you would like.
We decided to make the change to a meter model for several reasons.
It allows folks interested in a particular local story to read it and, hopefully, look at the rest of the site and then choose to subscribe.
It provides better value to our current and future subscribers because they now are the only ones who have unlimited access to specific content like Police Reports or Georgia Southern sports or all the content on statesboroherald.com.
We really appreciate your continuing support of the Statesboro Herald and statesboroherald.com through the years. We strive to bring you local news, sports and advertising you can’t get anywhere else and deliver that content in a format you want to read.
Again, thanks for being our customers.