The Orange County Register has moved to a paywall (monthly subscription) for unlimited access to their digital news content. In the announcement on May 3, 2018 the OC Register declared “this news organization will no longer be giving its work away online.” This is an interesting statement because the site still contains ads to which advertisers pay the OC Register. So in short you can pay to access the OC Register and be served ads, including page takeovers which take you away from the content you’re now paying for. The OC Register has published an article about their paywall which you can read but only if you pay for their subscription service.
Beginning today, this news organization will no longer be giving its work away online.https://t.co/YMYWq3aTMa
— O.C. Register (@ocregister) May 8, 2018
This isn’t the first attempt by The OCR to charge for digital news. They also attempted this back in April 2013 but seemingly failed and reverted back to the ad supported model that many news site still use today.
Currently, the first four weeks is 99 cents and $10 every four weeks after that.
How to Circumvent The OCR Paywall
To do this probably doesn’t seem like fair play and we would expect the OC Register to cry foul. However, they did this very thing when they published a detailed article on “How to circumvent the NY Times pay wall” which you can read with a paid subscription or add an Anti-Paywall plugin to your browser. Disclaimer: While others may advocate circumventing a paywall we do not.
Alternative Options to the Orange County Register
Perhaps the reason a paywall didn’t work in the past is because you can get the same news for free elsewhere. Here are some local sites that publish much of the same information.