St. Cloud Times Creating Online Paywall

ST. CLOUD - The St. Cloud Times plans to start charging you to view some of their online content.

In a letter sent to their subscribers, Times Publisher Scott Johnson says the newspaper will begin using an online pay wall for non-subscribers starting February 1st.

Generally, paywalls help media companies monetize their content online by requiring users to pay for what they read. But it doesn't necessarily mean non-subscribers are blocked entirely. For instance, the Minneapolis Star Tribune allows you to look at up to 20 stories a month for free before having to pay anything for online access.

Online paper MinnPost says the St. Cloud Time's parent company Gannett debuted a paywall with their Tallahassee paper in 2010. In that case they made their section fronts and classifieds free.

We have calls into the St. Cloud Times and will update you with more specific information when we hear back from them. However, the Times letter to subscribers DOES say print edition subscribers will still be able to access everything on the newspaper's website come February 1st.