‘Today, We Announce An Historic Change In How We Do Business’
The Tallahassee Democrat is putting up a paywall, but you might not know it from reading its article about the change.
As Jeff Jarvis noted on Twitter, the paper took ten paragraphs to get to the point.
Steve Buttry of TBD.com added: “Boastful description of proud history before buried lead about paywall kinda reads like an obit. Appropriately.”
“Three years before the first Model T automobiles rolled out of Henry Ford’s factories,” the piece begins, “the Tallahassee Democrat began serving our communities with invaluable news and information.”
It’s not until clicking to the next page that the article mentions the paywall: $10 per month for the website, or $15 per month for the website and “e-edition” (which nobody really likes anyway, do they?) Day passes cost $2.
The Tallahassee Democrat employs 300 people, and obviously management is hoping that the paywall will keep those 300 employed.
As a Gannett owned paper, the paper went through a round of layoffs in 2008 (as did the rest of Gannett) and again in 2009.
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