Open Letter to JSONLINE: You Need To Review Your Pay Wall Policy

 First, for those of you who don't know, JSOnline is the website for the print newspaper, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And yes they rely on a combination of subscription and advertising to pay the bills. So at JSOnline many of the front page articles are behind a pay wall and marked for subscribers only. 

I promised this post sometime ago but let it slip a bit, but today's version of JSOnline brought it to the fore. Now I don't totally agree with their stance but I understand it. I wrote about politics on a free site for 14 years and am here in a similar capacity. The first site did try advertising revenue for a while but the revenue was negligible. But I would suppose the MJS has sufficient advertising to support themselves if they wanted without the pay wall forcing additional subscribers. I am sure they would beg to differ.

 

But that's only the side story for now. My ISSUE is with what the put behind the pay wall. Exclusive personal interest stuff. Fine. Big breaking sports stuff. Fine. Best new restaurants. Fine.

But today they published an article of particular importance to the community as a whole:

In a crowded field for governor, here are the candidates' one big idea by Molly Beck.

Every resident and every voter and every business in the State of Wisconsin has an interest in who is elected our next governor. This type of reporting belongs front page (well it is) and NOT behind a pay wall. Everyone should be able to access the candidates responses (and those who did not respond) so they can make informed decisions in 2026.

Come on MJS and JSOnline.  Be the community representative that public media is supposed to be and report on current political events and make that reporting available to everyone. EVERYONE!

Full disclosure: I am a subscriber of the print MJS with daily and Sunday delivery to my home.