On April 4, the Journal Star will start charging to see their news articles online. You’ll get a few articles for free each month, but then the rest will be behind a pay wall. You can read about it here and here.

I think it’s a good idea. I cancelled my 7-day-a-week subscription to the Journal Star precisely because they were putting all the same information online for free. Why should I shell out around $200 a year for material everyone else is getting for free? I mean, if the Journal Star wants to give away their content, then I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Now that they’re going to start charging, I’ll consider resubscribing. However, I’m probably not going to subscribe to the print edition again. Why? Because it doesn’t include the web content.

Users who currently receive a seven-day subscription to the Journal Star are eligible for full online access for $1.49 a month or $9.95 per year. For those who do not subscribe to the Journal Star, the cost will be $6.95 per month or $69.95 per year.

That’s right: if you pay $200 a year for the print edition, they won’t throw in the web access for free (like, say, the New York Times does, even for its Sunday-only subscribers). You’ll have to pay even more to get the same information on the website. I think the news the Journal Star provides has value and is worth paying for — but not worth paying twice for the same thing (except when they endorsed me, I did buy a couple of print copies — it was worth it then!).

So, once the pay wall goes up, I think I’ll pick up the web-only subscription and leave it at that.