A reminder that journalism costs money

We are about democracy, providing a platform for the population we represent to voice their opinion, holding local authorities to account when our readers don’t believe they have been served well.

We attend council meetings, courts and inquests and provide a public service that otherwise would not exist in Rotherham.

We are still bringing out a paper through the coronavirus crisis, despite reduced staff numbers and the withdrawal of almost all advertising.

It costs money to do this and many people choose to read stories online rather than buy the paper, and they do so without making any payment.

These stories and features cost us money to produce and bring nothing in financially.

The stories on Facebook and our website are extremely limited in number compared to those in the printed product, but they still take time and effort, without bringing in revenue.

A number of weeks ago we started to ask for a small fee for people to access our articles — not the small pieces about overnight bin fires, for example. We continue to provide free breaking news regarding incidents that affect, for instance, traffic, but our longer items such as features, the highlighting of planning applications, stories about local authority wrong-doings, court cases, details of what’s going on in the local sports scene and our exclusive weekly columns now require a small payment.

There is now a charge of 20p per premium article — no more than 40p a day — to read some of our longer stories online.

We use a new secure system, called Axate, which allows readers to top up an online ‘wallet’ to read those premium articles.

It is simple to sign up to and inexpensive to use and the income it generates will help sustain our commitment to quality journalism at a time when the reduced number of advertisers supporting the paper alone does not fund this.

This move will enable us to continue the fight to make Rotherham’s voice louder.

We know it  won’t be popular with everyone but when you sign up you can be safe in the knowledge you are helping quality, sustainable journalism on an independent newspaper, employing people who live in the borough.