Washington Post’s paywall goes up June 12

Washington Post: On June 12, we will begin phasing in our metered subscription model. It will take us a few weeks to get everyone into the system, but doing that will allow us to ensure that you have the best possible experience.

Once the subscription service launches, you will initially be able to view 20 pieces of content per month before being asked to subscribe. We hope you will consider subscribing even if you don’t reach the limit; a subscription will provide unlimited access to all The Post’s world-class journalism, multimedia and interactive features and more. Importantly, you will also be helping to support our newsgathering operations.

Whether or not you subscribe, we will not limit your ability to view The Post’s homepage and section front pages, watch videos or search classified advertising. In addition, readers who come to The Post through search engines or shared links will be able to access the linked page regardless of the number of articles they have previously viewed.

So basically, it’s pretty much identical to the NYT’s paywall. I’ve found this model to be surprisingly unburdonsome. If you have favorite columnists or bloggers, bookmark their Twitter or Facebook feeds and you should be able to continue to read them no problem. I’ve also found that aggregators get through the paywall — I have no problem reading Krugman through links on my own Must-Read Superfeed — presumably because they’re redirected through Feedburner and Yahoo! Pipes. I guess this qualifies as “shared links.” I’m assuming that bloggers like Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent will work the same way. Worse comes to worst, run the link through TinyURL and it should get you through.

We’ll find out for sure on June 12th and I’ll make any adjustments to the Superfeed that need to be made. But judging from WaPo’s own reporting, it doesn’t look like I’ll have to change a thing.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]