Your free WBJ content ride is about to end
On May 24, Worcester Business Journal launched a new version of WBJournal.com, updating our website with a modern digital look, better storytelling and improved organization for ease of use, particularly on WBJ’s bigger projects.
The new site also comes with a paywall, which we expect to launch in about a month.
I know asking you to pay for something you previously got for free will lead to some backlash, but it is 100% necessary in a journalism world where GateHouse Media in May again cut the staff of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and laid off an important voice in the Central Mass. community in Worcester Magazine Editor Walter Bird. The complete elimination of Worcester Magazine seems not far over the horizon.
WBJ has produced great content in my four years here as editor, and nearly all of you have gotten it for free. (Except for our paid print subscribers, of course. First off, I love you. Second, your print subscription gives you access behind the digital paywall at no extra cost). Our Boardroom Gap series last year was named the Best Investigative Journalism in New England. Our News Editor, Grant Welker, was named this year’s Master Reporter by the New England Society of News Editors. Every day, WBJ’s small editorial staff pours our blood, sweat and tears into producing great market intelligence for you all to be better business owners, executives and community movers and shakers.
Now, the time has come to pay for it. And, really, we’re talking like $5 a month, depending on which plan you buy. That’s less than half the standard Netflix subscription.
Advertising-supported journalism – on which WBJ has nearly entirely relied for more than a decade – can only go so far, and it has an indirect relationship to the quality of content produced in the newsroom. Subscription-supported journalism has a direct relationship to quality. If we produce articles you want to read, you’ll pay for it. If we don’t, then you won’t.
WBJ has been producing subscription-quality journalism for a long time now, and we will finally start realizing those revenues. And once those revenues start trickling into the newsroom, our high quality is only going to get better.
- Brad Kane, editor
WBJ Web Partners
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