Why we don't have a paywall
Journalism is vital to our democracy and our community. And we believe it should be free and accessible to everyone.
This is Ryan Belmore, Publisher of What’sUpNewp.
Journalism is vital to our democracy and our community. And we believe it should be free and accessible to everyone.
We’ll say it again - we believe everyone deserves access to the important and vital news, information, coverage, and stories that we provide, and that they need.
We’ve held fast to that core value despite economic pressures and massive changes to the news industry and small local businesses (a.k.a. our advertisers) as a whole.
Even with the wild ride that the last few years have been, we’ve invested in building and growing our coverage. We’ve brought on more contributors, invested in more local, independent coverage, and just recently have invested in relationships with The Associated Press and Stacker to bring more relevant news and content to our coverage.
We’ve already published 1,490 stories so far this year- 465 of those just last month. Those stories are all free to read, but they’re not free to produce. When you factor in paying a writer and possibly photographer a decent wage to do a story, plus all the web hosting/ad server/newsletter hosting, and other fees that our business pays monthly… the average original story costs us approximately $217 to produce.
Rather than throwing up a paywall or charging a subscription fee, we believe there is another way to fund quality local, independent journalism. We are doubling down on the idea that if we ask our readers to contribute what you think we’re worth, we can build a sustainable business model for independent news in Rhode Island.
If you value our independent, local, and dependable reporting, will you support it today?
Your support doesn’t go to Wall Street, it stays right here in the community. All reader support is earmarked for our contributors - which helps to bring more of the stories that you want and need to our website.
We promise we’ll make you proud of your investment.
Thank you,
Ryan Belmore
Publisher, What’sUpNewp