Harlingen Valley Morning Star

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:52pm on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

The Harlingen Valley Morning Star began charging for online access to the newspaper on July 15, 2009. It is the first newspaper owned by Freedom Communications to do so.

On July 11, 2009 the newspaper reported:

"Readers who now subscribe seven days a week to the printed newspaper will have free unlimited access to the online edition.

These subscribers will need only to register online for full access to the Web site that provides regular news updates throughout the day, as well as video and other features.

“It will allow greater value to our many loyal print-edition subscribers by not giving away the news to non-subscribers,” Valley Morning Star Publisher Tyler Patton said.

“The days of giving content away, which costs money to create and for which we charge our print subscribers, I think, are just over,” he said.

Readers who prefer to obtain their news online will be able to subscribe for an online-only edition, with all the daily news updates, video and other features, Patton said.

The Star was chosen to inaugurate Freedom Communications’ online initiative for the frequency of its daily updates to valleystar.com and its adoption of other online-only features, which this year has resulted several times in a million or more online page views per month.

“It’s something that’s being looked at in this industry by virtually every newspaper company,” Patton said.

Full online-only access will be available for $3.95 per month.

Daily online subscriptions are available for 75 cents. Readers can pay for their online editions by credit card at the Valley Morning Star Web site."