How far would you get if you entered your favorite restaurant and begged, cajoled or demanded a free meal? There’s a dish on the menu that you’ve always considered, but you’re not sure if you would like it.
Wait! I know, I know — you deserve a free meal, right? After all, you’re a loyal patron. You visit the establishment often, but why should you pay for the food you enjoy? But we all learned a long time ago that, unfortunately, there’s no free lunch.
Same thing with local grocery stores. Would you enter Food Lion, Food City or Priceless Foods and try to wheedle or haggle for a discount? Or forget discounts. How about a free box of cereal? I’ve never tried that brand. I’m not Mikey. I don’t like everything.
I blame the internet. Seriously. The internet offers up everything à la carte. Try a bit of this, a little of that, and it was all free until the providers of this and the creators of that began to wise up and realized they could charge for their talent and time and work.
Content. Information. Media. Call it what you will. There’s a wealth of a la carte items available to readers and users of content.
We’re in the year 2025, not 2005. Content providers, writers, journalists, editors, designers, photographers, videographers and others all eventually came to the conclusion that they like to shop for groceries and go out to eat. Most content that makes the pages of the newspaper is not free to us. By and large, it cannot be free to consumers.
Every story, article and column in The Erwin Record has been produced by someone. Isn’t that person entitled to a fair exchange for their time, talent and effort? Restaurants pay their cooks and cleaners and wait staff. Grocery stores pay their cashiers, their shelf stockers and their baggers.
As a civic service, the newspapers that form Six Rivers Media have made sure to put content about last year’s regional catastrophes from Hurricane Helene in front of a paywall. We’ve also made some of our offerings à la carte. You don’t want a full subscription? Fine. Get a day pass for a buck. Look at that one story, the article about a family member, a friend or a co-worker’s kid, and then whatever other content you can read in a 24-hour period.
We cannot make readers value our efforts. That’s a personal decision each must make. But we cannot cheapen our own work by not placing value on it. Fewer people are involved in the process of putting together a weekly newspaper these days. That’s a fact that simply can’t be denied.
Without going into a list of pros and cons, I will simply state that those who do contribute to our weekly edition of The Erwin Record try to provide the best, whether they are putting forth news stories, human interest features, sports articles, photographs or asides about local history.
Every print subscription to The Erwin Record and all other Six River Media newspapers comes with an automatic subscription to our online content. Subscribers get 24/7 access.
The day pass is a great idea, but a subscription is a better one for people who like a good deal. Making a daily purchase of a day pass for $1 would equal $30 by the end of a month. We’re now talking nearly the cost of a year’s subscription for in-county residents.
A subscription is a better deal. Remind yourself that, after one month, there’s no additional cost. You’ll get a print edition delivered to your home weekly and can visit the newspaper’s website at any time of the day to enjoy the latest content.
Still not convinced? Consider this. Your cost, per day, is about 11 cents. With prices like that, it’s almost a free lunch after all.
Bryan Stevens is managing editor of The Erwin Record. You can contact him at bstevens@sixriversmedia.com or call 423-743-4112.