Why do I need an account with The Journal?

Having an account with The Journal is entirely optional right now. You are under no obligation to create one in order to engage with our award-winning journalism, polls, quizzes, digital magazines and more.

But having an account, and continuing to use it by signing in, is a great way to support us. We use this information to understand how our users engage with our work, and in tailoring our marketing and advertising messages to you. A better understanding of user behaviour, such as how you navigate our website or app, will help us improve your experience.

Additionally, if you are one of our generous readers who have made a financial contribution to The Journal, you will no longer see calls to contribute once you sign in.

What can you learn about me from my account?

Having our readers set up with an account is an important step towards making our news business more commercially viable and sustainable. Primarily, it will give us a view of how many of our readers are signed into an account, versus those who are not, and eventually tailor an experience based on that knowledge. The data we collect and how it is stored is unchanged from how we do so now and that is outlined here.

Does having an account give me access to any extra experiences?

Yes. You may only participate in The Journal’s comments section if you have registered a free account with us. We are hoping in future that an account will give you access to further benefits and experiences.

Is signing in for an account going to be mandatory?

In the future, having all of our readers set up with an account seems to make sense. It could allow us to be more commercially viable to advertisers and make it easier for us to bring you a more tailored and useful experience. The Journal has always been user-focused and in this, as with all of our innovations, we want to roll out change in an incremental way. This allows us to test for tech bugs, consider your feedback in making improvements and reduce friction by bringing the audience on to their free accounts at a pace that suits them.

To be clear, we haven’t yet decided whether sign-ins will be mandatory in the future; we are using this phase to understand and analyse its impact.

Is this the beginning of a paywall?

The Journal is committed to providing free access to the news of the day to everyone who needs it. We believe access to quality information is a right and a cornerstone of a democratic community. That hasn’t changed and it is why we encourage those who can afford it to consider contributing to our voluntary readers’ fund to keep access open for all.

Saying that, The Journal, as an independent media outlet, is operating in a very constrained revenue environment. In order to ensure our survival, we will always consider where we can provide additional value to readers’ experience that they will be willing to pay for.

What do you do with my data?

Nothing is going to change with how we process your data and you can read about Journal Media’s adherence to data privacy and user safety here.

Why am I being asked to share my location?

By choosing this option, you allow us to deliver additional information that is most useful to you at your preferred location. This currently includes local water notices or weather alerts; in the future, we would like to be able to connect you with even more of the things happening in your area that you should or would like to be aware of.

Will you share or sell my location information with a third party?

We will not sell your location information to a third party. We will share your location with some select third parties in order to more efficiently direct live notices from a service provider or ads from a particular brand to your device. Our privacy policy is kept up to date and explains how we use your data.

In reality, this means getting timely information such as water quality alerts directly to you even as you go to turn on your tap, or better targeting advertising of goods or services more appropriate to the area where you live, work and relax. Being able to target these services is also good news for Journal Media as they can bring in revenue that we are currently missing out on, and which we need to sustain our journalism.

Okay, I’m going to sign up for an account with The Journal. What happens next?

We have made the process of creating an account as easy as possible for you. Just remember to sign in the next time you access us on your preferred device and that’s it! We will guide you through the features and best bits of The Journal in a welcome journey sent to your registered email address. You may opt out of this at any time.

I want to support The Journal but I don't want to sign in to your publication right now. Can I do something else to support you?

While we hope readers will see the benefits of signing in, there are lots of ways you can continue to support our mission.

A chief one is to consider how much you use The Journal and whether you can commit to making a regular contribution to our readers’ fund in order to keep us doing the investigations, explainers, fact-checks, analysis and reporting that you and hundreds of thousands of monthly users enjoy each month. However, if you don’t sign in you will continue to see requests to contribute and other marketing messages.

If you are not in a position to make a contribution right now, know that we also value your engagement with our many interactive features, such as our daily poll and our weekend quizzes. You can also join the ranks of listeners to our podcast offerings by subscribing to The Explainer, The 42FM news and sport collab and other special series wherever you listen to your pods. Or sign up for one of our excellent newsletters such as FactCheck, Inside The Newsroom, Temperature Check climate update and The Journal Investigates.

And of course, if you value our work, make sure to share it with the friends, family and networks who you think will enjoy and value it too.

Can I create an account without sharing my everyday email address?

Yes, you can create an account with any email address - as long as it has a functioning inbox so that you can verify your account and receive sign in links.

I still have questions about this. Who can I contact?

The improvements we make to The Journal are always better with the input of our audience. If you have questions we have not yet answered, please contact us on support@thejournal.ie and we will do our utmost to help.