Washington Post to Make Employees Pay for Access to Website They Work For
Employees of The Washington Post will have to buy a subscription to read the website of the newspaper they work for after the Post implements its new pay<strike>wall</strike> meter. Publisher Katharine Weymouth announced on Wednesday morning that starting June 12, readers will have to pay $9.99 to access more than 20 articles a month on the site. In a memo to staffers obtained by The Atlantic Wire, Weymouth announced that goes for them, too. In the Post's offices, employees will have full access to the site. But at home, employees who do not get the paper delivered will have to buy a digital subscription. Good news though: they might be able to expense it! The full memo:
From: Weymouth, Katharine Date: Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:09 PM Subject: Digital Access for Post Employees To:
As many of you heard in today’s town hall, we will be rolling out our digital meter over the course of a few weeks beginning June 12.
All employees will have unlimited access to The Post’s digital products on desktop or mobile while in the building or connected to our network via VPN. If you need digital access to The Post outside of the network or access to apps in order to do your job, talk with your manager and you may be able to submit an expense report to get reimbursed for a digital subscription.
If you are already a home delivery subscriber to The Post, you will have complimentary access just by linking your print subscription to your digital account. (To do so, click "register" on the left corner of washingtonpost.com.)
If you are not a home delivery subscriber and would like to sign up for home delivery with complimentary digital access, register by going to WPOnet and clicking on employee discounts and then clicking on subscriptions. As with the newspaper, we will offer employee discounts for digital subscriptions. Employee digital subscriptions will be available on WPOnet at the end of June.
If you have any questions signing up please contact the customer contact center at circcontactcenter@washpost.com or 202-334-9900.
Katharine
Not everyone at the Post seems happy about the paywall. Wonkblog's Ezra Klein guides his readers to a few loopholes:
“Students, teachers, school administrators, government employees and military personnel who sign on from their schools or workplaces” will still get free access. And if you come in through a Facebook or Twitter link, it doesn’t count toward your 20 articles. I imagine there will turn out to be some other backdoors, as well. But otherwise, it’s $9.99 a month.
(Photo by a loves dc via Flickr.)
