Austin Daily Herald

Why surveys?

Readers have asked us why access to some of the Herald’s online content now involves answering a survey question. The reason is simple: To help keep the Herald’s website a free source of community news and information.

Many newspapers, including several in Minnesota, now have a fee for access to their web sites. Our goal is to keep the Herald site open to all.

There are, however, costs involved in gathering news and operating the website. So rather than charge for access, we have begun including reader surveys on some articles. This type of advertising provides us a small payment for each completed survey and, most importantly, costs our readers nothing.

No personal information is gathered in the survey process. Rather, the information is aggregated to give national companies general guidelines to help with their marketing campaigns.

We hope that these surveys, which take only a few seconds to complete, prove to be a good way to support our web site operations — without cost to our readers.