SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Active readers of Syracuse.com may soon have to start paying as much as $240 per year to access all the online content that they currently get for free.

Parent company Advance Local is rolling out what’s referred to in the industry as a soft paywall.

“… we are preparing to launch our first consumer revenue test in Syracuse this fall with a sophisticated, data-driven metered approach, not a hard paywall, which would needlessly depress the size and growth of our digital audience,” Randy Siegel, CEO, and Caroline Harrison, president, said in a note posted on the Advance Local website this summer. “The Syracuse initiative will be an excellent learning environment for us to better understand how we can maximize the value we provide our loyal readers every day while asking them to support our journalistic efforts.”

Syracuse.com will charge $19.99 per month for “unlimited digital access,” including the ePost-Standard and its newsletters, according to a notice on the subscription section of its website.

Frequent users of Syracuse.com, those that visit the site at least once a day and possibly others, will see a screen pop up asking them to become a digital subscriber, according to a WSYR-TV story.

Current paid subscribers to the Post-Standard will continue to have unlimited access to the website but will need to register their subscription online.

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