By Kelsey Jones

While researching or reading up on a certain topic or current event, one of the most frustrating things in the world is to be taken to a snippet of the article and to be told that to read the entire article, one needs to sign up for a paid membership to the site.

As a Citizen of the Internet, I cannot hit my back button fast enough. I will never pay for content that I can get somewhere else.

And your consumers shouldn’t have to either.

As Ben Parr from Mashable stated in 2010, “The numbers speak for themselves: The old newspaper model is simply not going to be market-viable as we head deeper in the digital age. News blogs (such as Mashable) and online reporting are the future of journalism.

That doesn’t mean that newspapers should simply give up and die. There are many things that newspapers can do to avoid extinction. The ones that embrace the online space faster and more effectively have the best chance for survival.”

News and current event articles, as well as columns, tutorials, and blog posts should never require readers to pay for access. The fire on 2nd street in downtown Manhattan, Kansas isn’t the secret to finding the Holy Grail, so why should I have to pay to read about it, especially when I can find out all the details from Twitter, Facebook, or another Free news site or blog?

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