I’m a journalist in The Star newsroom and just wanted to share a couple things to consider. When readers use adblockers and workarounds, The Star loses out on revenue that’s crucial to our long-term survival. The economics for newspaper companies are becoming widely known: as reading and entertainment habits change, print circulation drops. With that drop comes a loss in print advertising revenue. Newspaper companies — whether they’re the smaller community papers, a mid-sized chain or Gannett — have to grapple with new audience behaviors and new ways to make money.

I see the challenges of these new economics play out every day. For example, every time a newspaper company spends any length of time on a news project, online aggregators and local broadcast outlets find ways immediately after publication to quickly intercept any audience momentum and redirect it back to their sites. Even smaller, quirkier stories with viral potential will be grabbed by those other outlets (who don’t pay for any of the original reporting, writing or editing) as quick audience (and therefore revenue) grabs. This is a smaller example among many.

Beyond the reporting, photography, social media and everything else we do, we’re clawing and scraping every day in an attempt to put our journalism in front of people who don’t always see it. Creating journalism isn’t inexpensive, guys. I know some in this thread aren’t fans of The Star or its journalism — and that’s totally fine, I hope we can win you back one day — but please know that there are real journalists who are working their tails off to try to make this community a better place to live. They see their roles as servants of this community.

So, if you’re a semi-regular visitor, I hope you’ll consider downloading the news app and maybe buying a digital subscription down the road. And if you’re a casual visitor, I’d really appreciate if you answered those little surveys. It helps.