Newsday Starts Charging $5 Weekly Fee

Posted on October 22, 2009

Newsday has announced that people who are not Optimum Online customers or Newsday customers will have to start paying a $5 weekly fee to access Newsday.com. Non-subscribers will get access to some of the site:

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com's information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

Newsday is calling it a "pioneering Web model."

"We are excited about this model because in addition to a unique ability to immediately reach about 75 percent of Long Island households, we believe the hyper-local approach is right for Long Island," said Debby Krenek, Newsday managing editor and senior vice president/digital.

$5 a week is a lot to charge for online access. Even the Wall Street Journal doesn't charge that much for an annual online subscription. Dvorak says it amounts to $260 a year. Editor & Publisher says Newsday will "listen" to feedback and may tinker with what content is hidden behind the online newspaper's subsscription wall.