At long last: our new digital edition is here!
After much ado, we’re pleased to announce that our new digital edition is now live!
The new digital edition is the same as our webpage, www.norwegianamerican.com. Instead of posting only a few articles per week, little teases of NAW’s content, we will now be posting all of our original content there on the web.
The new world of digital publishing is a tricky one to navigate. There’s a fine line between providing easy access to online content—like posting links to articles on facebook and twitter—and the very real need to be paid for it.
We hope that our new solution will help us to walk that line. The model is called a “leaky paywall,” and it’s the same kind of system used by newspapers like the New York Times. It means that you can browse around our site for a little while, but if you look at too many articles per week—in our case more than three—you’ll be asked to log in.
In addition to the blog-post-type articles, you have access to pdf files of the newspaper, similar to what you could see in our old digital system. These are at the top of the webpage, under “Archives.” The page is password protected; to get the password, please email subscribe@na-weekly.com with your subscriber number and ask for it. Once you have the password, please don’t share it with everyone you know. Maybe only half?
We think this new system will be much more user friendly than our old digital edition. As those of you who’ve tried to use the old system can attest, that shouldn’t be hard! One of the benefits is that you can now share articles with your friends through email or social media. Please do! Your friends who are not subscribers will be able to read one or two, up to three articles before our site asks them to pay. By that time, we hope they’ll be hooked on NAW and want to join our community.
Since this is a big change for us, we ask that you be patient as we work the kinks out of the system. There are sure to be issues with access; let me just apologize for those in advance.
As of this writing, we have created accounts for every current subscriber whose email we have on file. Here’s how it should work for you, dear subscribers:
• When you hit your limit of pages on the site, it will prompt you to “login or subscribe.”
• Enter the email address that you wish you use.
• You’ll be sent an email with a link:
• If we have your email on file, the link will take you to the full site and you should be able to read as many articles as you like.
• If we don’t have your email on file, the link will take you to a page where you’ll be asked to purchase a subscription.
If you are a print subscriber, DO NOT pay for a digital subscription—this is included with your print subscription. If you’re prompted to pay, please email us at subscribe@na-weekly.com with your subscriber number and we’ll set you up.
Ta-da!
You can use your account on any computer, tablet, or phone that accesses the web, but you will have follow these steps for each device or browser. The system will remember you for a time, but don’t be alarmed if it asks you to do this again after a little while.
Enjoy!
This article originally appeared in the Aug. 29, 2014 issue of the Norwegian American Weekly. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (800) 305-0271.
