The Post Register, which has roughly the same circulation and has essentially the same community mission as the Times-News, never has given away its most precious asset — its local news — for free.

For a few years, we dabbled on the Internet, putting only a small portion of our news online. But in early 2002 we got serious — we put our entire newspaper online, but we asked our readers to subscribe to the online edition, just as we have since 1880 for our print edition.

It seemed to us — and this is dawning on more and more publishers lately — that it simply didn’t make any sense to expect a reasonable fee for our print edition but nothing for the same information provided online. It is, in a word, crazy. Beyond that, it’s blatantly unfair to subscribers who faithfully and willingly pay for their news in print while online readers get it for free.

Hundreds of newspapers across the country are following suit, and I applaud the Times-News for being one of them. This has nothing to do with greed — it’s all about finding a sustainable business model in the exciting but challenging new media world. That’s in the best interests of the newspapers’ readers and advertisers.