That is to say, you get to read a limited number of stories per month and if you want to view more than that, you have to pay. Specifies for the Charlotte Observer are yet to be announced.
Surprised by McClatchy’s move? You shouldn’t be. The limited-free-then-you-pay model is all the rage for newspaper websites. Among the state’s big papers, the Fayetteville Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, and Asheville Citizen-Times have already adopted it. The Greensboro News & Record restricts most of its local content to subscribers only.
Whether what the New York Times and all these other papers are doing makes sense is a different question. The move will certainly reduce the number of people who look at their content. Whether the additional subscribers they get more than offsets the loss in advertising revenue from fewer page views remains to be seen.
