Last Friday, the Central Western Daily advised readers that they would soon cease to provide their online news service free. Put simply, to read the site soon will involve a cost, commonly called a paywall.

The publisher claims that introducing a paywall in Orange follows the successful introduction of a similar facility in Southern New South Wales.

It will be interesting to see how the Orange community responds to the change but it can be assumed that readership of the site will drop dramatically, certainly until those who may wish to sign up do so.

Asking people to pay for a service like this is not new and it’s not unreasonable, it also makes very good commercial sense, the problem is that during the transition period over the last 10 years or thereabouts, so many like the CWD have provided such services for free. To now ask people to pay is going to be a bitter pill for many current readers to swallow.

One thing we can all be sure of, this will only be one of several changes that will occur in the newspaper business in Orange over coming months.