The Daily Times (Maryville) and Leader-Telegram Paywalls: How to Read Adams Publishing Papers for Free

The Daily Times of Maryville, Tennessee and the Leader-Telegram of Eau Claire, Wisconsin are a long way apart and have little in common beyond their owner. Both belong to Adams Publishing Group, also styled APG or Adams MultiMedia, the family-owned chain that the Adams family of Minnesota has built since 2014 and that now owns well over 100 community papers. Both run on the same publishing system, with the same metered paywall, and both loaded in full in our tests. This guide covers the two papers together, explains how the Adams paywall works and shows how to read a full article from either.

The two papers

The Daily Times (thedailytimes.com) was founded in 1883 and covers Blount County in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, including Maryville College, from offices in Alcoa. It publishes daily and has a print circulation of about 4,900 (2025). One thing sets it apart: it blocks visitors from Europe entirely, returning an HTTP 451 "unavailable for legal reasons" page rather than the site. A reader in Europe cannot open it directly at all, even for a free story.

The Leader-Telegram (leadertelegram.com) was founded in 1881 and was owned by the Graaskamp and Atkinson families from 1887 until Adams bought it. It has a circulation of about 14,000 (2022) and introduced its paywall in April 2019, when the paywall launched at 99 cents a day or $9.99 a month. The current price is on its site.

How the Adams Publishing paywall works

Both papers run on the BLOX content system used by many US local papers, with a metered paywall applied in the browser. A non-subscriber can open a number of articles before the subscription prompt takes over, and the count is kept on your own device. The gate is enforced in the browser: the article text is delivered in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks whether you are a subscriber or over your limit and swaps the body for the subscribe box. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters.

The Daily Times adds a second gate, the geographic block on European visitors, but that one is applied by location, not by subscription. Skip the Paywall fetches from the United States, so it is not affected, which makes it one of the few ways a reader in Europe can open a Daily Times story at all.

Our tests on 29 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:

• A 472-word The Daily Times report on Maryville College welcoming thousands for its homecoming celebration loaded in full, all 14 paragraphs.
• An 885-word The Daily Times report on a Blount County workshop advancing Flock camera and ambulance resolutions loaded in full, all 12 paragraphs.
• A 475-word Leader-Telegram front-page report on two developers who could take over a downtown Eau Claire development loaded in full, all 17 paragraphs.
• A 319-word Leader-Telegram local brief on county assistance programmes sharing one location loaded in full, all 11 paragraphs.

Read a Daily Times or Leader-Telegram article in full

• Copy the article link. Daily Times links look like thedailytimes.com/news/ followed by the headline and article_ plus an id, ending in .html. Leader-Telegram links look like leadertelegram.com/news/front-page/ followed by the headline and the same article_ id pattern.
• Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
• The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.

If you are in Europe and cannot open thedailytimes.com to copy a link, a search result or a shared link from social media carries the same address, and the reader accepts it directly.

Other approaches

• The meter. Both papers are metered rather than closed, so as far as we can tell a private window resets the count for a non-subscriber.
• Newsletters. Both sites list email newsletters, and as far as we can tell the daily headline bulletins are free to receive and link to the stories.
• Library access. Many US public libraries offer digital newspaper access to cardholders. Whether a given library carries its local Adams paper varies, so it is worth asking.
• Related free sources. Much of both papers' coverage reports on public meetings: county commission agendas, city council minutes and Maryville College announcements are published free and can be read alongside the paper's account.

How it compares with other local papers

The Adams papers sit in a group of US community dailies whose BLOX sites deliver the full text and hide it in the browser. The Mankato Free Press, owned by CNHI, works, as does Ogden's group led by the Marshalltown Times-Republican, and in Wisconsin the Waukesha Freeman on gmtoday.com passed on the same day as the Leader-Telegram. The Gannett dailies in both states behave differently: the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in Wisconsin both block the reader, so there is no guide for either. Our list of sites that cannot be bypassed explains what to do instead, and the full list of sites that work is kept current.

Subscribe if you read it regularly

A paper covering a single county has a small newsroom and no national audience to fall back on. If you read The Daily Times or the Leader-Telegram every week, a digital subscription, with the current price on each paper's own site, is the right way to keep a reporter in the county commission meeting.