Sharon McLaughlin says she is fed up with young people having to pay fees to access online newspaper archives.
People are constantly encouraging young people to read the newspapers and keep up to date with news and current affairs. A lot of the time adults say young people have no interest in knowing what is really going on in the world and prefer to watch cartoons, play computer games or go on the Internet.
While researching the Internet for coursework recently however, I found the majority of newspapers have introduced charges to read articles on their archive online. Newspapers such as The Belfast Telegraph, The Irish News, The Independent and The Times all have these charges in operation.
Imposing these charges restricts young people from using these articles for research and homework. How is a school pupil meant to pay this fee when looking for an article? Many either don’t have the means for this type of payment, such as a debit or credit card, whereas most just can’t afford it!
I would be lying if I said all newspapers were charging online for articles over a week old. Our local newspaper, The Derry Journal, for example still has their archive as a free service, but how long will that last? If newspapers make a lot of money by having a fee, then what’s stopping all the newspapers from doing so?
In my opinion it is just a hassle for readers to have to go through the process of paying to read an article that may not even be of benefit to them. By having a fee, it puts young people off researching, meaning even if we do care what is going on around us our ways of accessing this information are being restricted. There has to be a way for young people to access archive articles for free. What do you think?
About the team
This story was produced by Sharon McLaughlin and edited by Rebecca Burns. It was published by Reach for the Sky website.
