Juneau Empire online paywall down temporarily

The Juneau Empire on Channel Drive. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)
The Juneau Empire on Channel Drive. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)

The Juneau Empire’s online paywall is temporarily down.

Director of Audience Abby Lowell says technical glitches were causing some customers to get locked out of juneauempire.com. So the paywall came down last Thursday.

“It’s supposed to remember users, their IP addresses, and the different machines and devices that they utilize, and basically it wasn’t doing that,” says Lowell. “So we just decided to take it down. No need to put our readers through that struggle.”

The Empire started charging for online content about a year and a half ago. It offers various prices for different levels of access, with full online access included for print subscribers.

Lowell says the newspaper saw a dip in online readership after the paywall went up, but the numbers are growing again. She says the company is not considering doing away with the paywall altogether.

“Our reporters work really hard every day,” Lowell says. “And we feel like if (readers) are paying for our content in print, there should be a small fee associated with it online as well.”

She expects the paywall to be back up by the end of the week.

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