Beginning in mid-May, Steamboat Pilot & Today will require online readers to register for a free account on SteamboatPilot.com. It’s one of the biggest changes we’ve made to our website since it initially launched.

In just the past 20 years, the technology we use to cover our communities has changed rapidly, and the pandemic pushed more of our readers online than ever before. Steamboat Pilot & Today must continue that evolution to ensure that its community journalism thrives for decades to come. The first step in doing that is knowing more about what our readers are interested in and giving them access to new tools that will help them find the news they’re looking for.

This change gives us the ability to listen to our readers like never before. If we know more about what interests you, we can dedicate our newsroom resources toward creating more of what you love to read, whether that be investigative reporting, ski industry news or feel-good stories.

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And when we understand more about our audience — who our users are, where they’re from, what they’re interested in — that allows us to better meet our advertisers’ needs, which will allow us to sell more of the impressions on our site locally. Readers like our free model, and this allows it to continue.

The long-term goal is to create a more customizable news experience for our users, ultimately leading to readers returning to our site more frequently. Most of our print readers pick up the paper at least five days a week, and we want to build those same habits online.

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We’re getting things started in mid-May with our most loyal readers, those who visit our site several times each week. We know these readers value the work we do each day and will provide us with honest and constructive feedback about the process.

Then we’ll slowly include more readers who visit our site slightly less frequently, perhaps once a week, until all readers have created an account.

Registered users will have access to everything on our website and will benefit from some exclusive features, including accessing archives, submitting content for publication and participating in interactive features, such as the weekly poll.

If you don’t create an account, you’ll still have access to some areas of our site, including the most recent e-edition, the homepage, news category homepages (such as sports or entertainment) and classifieds. We’ll also work to ensure all readers have access to information pertaining to emergencies and threats to public safety. Other than that, reading articles will require logging in.

We know you get asked for your email address multiple times per day. Here’s why this ask is different: We won’t sell your email address or your data. And we won’t spam you. We’ll only email you if you’ve subscribed to one of our newsletters or to share information related to your account, such as benefits and tools.

Here’s how it works:

• If you already have an account on our site to receive email newsletters, desktop news alerts or the digital replica of the print paper, we’ll create an account for you and send you instructions for how to log in.
• If you don’t already have an account, you can create one at SteamboatPilot.com/register.

I’m sure you have more questions, so check out our FAQ. If your question isn’t answered there, feel free to call or email me. You can reach me at bstewart@SteamboatPilot.com or 970-879-1502.