Why we are asking you to pay for Newburytoday

This week marks one year since we introduced our paywall.

A huge thank you to the many hundreds of you who have appreciated the value of trusted local journalism and signed up for a subscription.

We really hope that you have agreed that it is value for money and that you enjoy reading the articles our team produces each day.

Since last November we have also introduced three, free newsletters which everyone can sign up for.

Thousands of you are now receiving The Briefing, direct to your inbox, every weekday morning, as well as our What’s On round up each Thursday afternoon and our glimpse behind the courtroom doors, with In The Dock, every Friday.

And we have big plans to continue providing our loyal subscribers with new and insightful content, as well as subscriber-only events.

But we know there are still people who are questioning why we have introduced a paywall.

So here’s why….

First and foremost, we are a business. We are not in any way funded by the taxpayer, or the BBC licence fee. We are just like all the coffee shops and supermarkets and other businesses across the district.

We have staff and bills to pay.

At Newburytoday and the Newbury Weekly News we are committed to delivering the very best coverage from communities right across the area, but we can only do this with the support of our readers.

We have been providing a valued news service for you all since 1867 and we intend to continue to be here for many years to come – holding councils and companies to account, celebrating your successes and ensuring open justice with extensive coverage from the courts.

And we know – from the many quite frankly abusive messages our staff have received in the past year – that you all want to access the great wealth of information that our highly qualified journalists provide.

But now the combined effects of Covid, the cost-of-living crisis, the surge in price of energy and raw materials and the growth of the global tech giants, like Google and Facebook, have hit our newspaper sales and advertising revenues really hard.

And we’re not the only ones.

Sadly, 293 newspapers which relied on advertising have closed since 2005 and 22 of those were in the last two years.

We are still going strong, but we need to establish a more secure financial footing if we are to celebrate our 160th birthday and beyond – and we can only do that with YOUR support.

So, like you all pay for the newspaper, rather than continue to offer our online news service for free, we are charging for most of it.

But the good news is that it will cost you less than 53p a week – that's less than 8p a day.

You can still read some articles for free each month before you will be asked to sign up for a digital subscription – either for £4.99 a month (and you get 12 months for the price of 11) OR at the discounted price of just £27.44 for the whole year.

For that small sum, you can browse the ad-lite premium version of our website, which is a more pleasant experience for the reader with no pop-up video ads.

You will also get to read a digital version of the full printed paper on your preferred device every Thursday; access a comprehensive archive of the NWN; read the 30-plus other titles in the Iliffe Media group, as well as national news; and get to test your brain power with interactive puzzles.

All that for less than 8p a day. We hope you agree it’s a small price to pay to ensure Newbury continues to have a trusted local news outlet, as it has done since 1867.

You can sign up here. Please use the offer code SarahBosley and you will get a half price annual subscription - so you pay just £27.44 for the year.

Thank you in anticipation of your support.