MANSFIELD — Let me be clear. This message is not a prelude to a paywall that locks you out of the news until you pay.
That business model is dead or dying, in our opinion.
If you are reading this, you know delivering the best local news coverage at no cost to our readers is something Richland Source and our sister pages Ashland Source and Crawford Source have made our mission from day one. Keeping the news open to all has been crucial to our explosive audience growth. We are staying with that formula because, frankly, it works.
You probably also know our team sees journalism not as something we do in a vacuum, but rather something we do with people. A great story means nothing if there’s no trust or connection with the reader. Our staff works each day to strengthen that connection.
With those two ideas in mind, I am happy to announce that Richland Source will make a few changes to our platform to deliver a better experience for our readers, keep the news free and open, and provide great new opportunities for collaboration and community.
Starting Wednesday, June 1, we will begin to ask readers who view more than 20 articles and/or images per month on any Richland Source platform to become a registered user. Becoming a registered user is free, easy, and opens up a bunch of new ways for readers to interact with one another, become part of our team, and get the news they want exactly when they want it.
Let me be clear again, this is not the prelude to a pay wall.
Instead, registered users can:
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Access our free email newsletters that deliver the day’s news right to your in-box.
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Easily add events to our Community Calendar.
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Quickly contribute news items, press releases, pictures and videos.
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Follow your favorite authors and save stories to read later or share with friends.
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Participate in a fantastic membership program that offers valuable savings, access to exclusive events, and — get this — gives back to non-profits in and around Mansfield.
Very simply, this change is our company asking frequent visitors to share their email with us so we can interact them in new and innovative ways. The goal is to provide so much value to the individual and the community that people want to support what we do here because they cannot imagine a local news landscape without Richland Source.
Ambitious? Yep.
Might not work? True.
But we’re gonna try it anyway. Thanks for reading.
You can sign in to your account or register as a user right now (hint). Takes two minutes.
If you have questions about how your e-mail will be used, here’s a link to our privacy policy.
All the best,
Jay Allred
Publisher
Besides send you the occasional e-mail, or deliver a newsletter you sign up for, not much.
Your information will not be sold, shared with, or given to any outside party.
For more information, please check out our privacy policy.
Okay. We figured there might be a few responses like that. We get it. Here’s a couple of ways to get around the system.
The easiest way is to set up your browser for “incognito” or “private” browsing. All major browsers support this technology and it will turn off cookies, so our system won’t know how many articles you’ve read.
Here’s a link to Incognito browsing in Chrome.
Another way is to periodically clear cookies from your browser. Doing so will reset the article counter and you’ll never have to register.
