Globe and Mail editor-in-chief John Stackhouse.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
On Thursday afternoon we announced The Globe will introduce an online subscription across our full website this fall. You may have questions about this. Here is what we can share so far.
We're adopting a metered approach, which means our readers will be able to access a certain number of articles across our website each month before they're asked to pay. Similar leading news organizations, such as The New York Times and The Financial Times, already do this. We will let you know how many articles will be free at a later date, but most readers will not run into the limit on the meter.
In addition, we announced last fall that we will offer an enhanced suite of exclusive business and investing journalism, tools and data as a separate product this year. We're still on track to do this.
Here are some questions we think our readers might have:
Why are we doing this? We want to continue to invest in the best journalism in Canada, and this move will help us to do that. We believe our journalism and the experience of our websites are worth paying for.
How much will we charge? Pricing hasn't been announced yet.
Will the subscription extend to our mobile site and apps? Yes.
Will everything on the website be metered, including videos, photo galleries or stock quote pages? This will be clarified later.
Will the site still be accessible from Facebook, Twitter and social media? Yes.
If I already pay for the newspaper or Globe2Go, will I need to pay more for an online subscription? We can confirm that newspaper and Globe2Go subscribers will get special access. Details will be announced later.
What will a customer get for the exclusive business and investing subscription? Sorry, state secret. Our competitors read this too.
There are bound to be more questions and we'll try to answer them in the comments area of this post.