MILWAUKEE – In recognition of the newspaper’s increased reliance on subscriptions, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday began making more content exclusively available to its subscribers.
“National news organizations, led by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, have found success sustaining their newsrooms despite the decline in advertising revenue by building the next generation of subscribers around their digital and mobile sites,” Journal Sentinel editor George Stanley wrote in a column announcing the change. “In the past few years, regional news outlets with strong newsrooms, including the Boston Globe and Minneapolis Star Tribune, have found a great deal of support from readers by doing the same.”
Stanley, who also serves on the WNA Board of Directors, said a “significant portion” of the newspaper’s reporting will be going behind the hard paywall, especially many “exclusive stories unavailable from other news sources.”
Stanley noted that paid digital subscriptions to the Journal Sentinel have gone up by 170% over the last two years.
According to a story in the Milwaukee Business Journal, the Journal Sentinel has led all Gannett publications in growing digital-only circulation.
