Washington Post to Add Paywall

By Gilbert Falso :: 10:27 PM

The Washington Post will be next in a series of daily newspapers to limit the amount of content that users can read online for free.
Joining the ranks of the New York Times and the Boston Globe, the Post will begin charging frequent readers of its web site this summer. Users who access 20 or more articles or features a month will be asked to pay a fee before subsequent articles are shown. The Post has not set the amount of the fee yet.

A large chunk of the Post’s audience will be exempt from the fees. This subset includes home-delivery subscribers, students, teachers, school administrators, government employees and military personnel. The home page of the Post, as well as home pages for each section and the classified ads section will not be restricted, either.

Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Post, released the following statement: “News consumers are savvy; they understand the high cost of a top-quality news gathering operation and the importance of maintaining the kind of in-depth reporting for which The Post is known. Our digital package is a valuable one, and we are going to ask our readers to pay for it and help support our news gathering as they have done for many years with the print edition.”

Insiders familiar with the Post organization claim that the paper will be introducing a new iPad application later this year, timed to release around the time the paywall is enacted.