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Do you pay for access to any online newspaper?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Mizzougrad96, Jan 10, 2014.

  1. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    Wall Street Journal.
     
  2. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I'm guessing here, but I would bet that the places that would be most successful getting digital subscribers would be the national papers (NYT, USA Today etc...) and the very small papers where most local news isn't going to be covered by AP or whatever the closest major paper is.

    The paywall is very necessary, but it should have been done as soon as the editions went online. You can't give away something for free for 15 years and then expect people to pay for it. It was handled as poorly and as stupidly as imaginable and it's a major reason why so many of us are no longer in the business.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I can't imagine sports steers the online subscription ship much, just because all of the information is so readily available nowadays for free. A lot of people, in fact, probably go to ESPN.com first for their local sports news rather than the local daily.
     
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    I have print subscriptions to the Times, Boston Globe and WSJ and hence have access to their sites. My company has access to EVERYTHING due to the nature of its business, so I read a lot at work.
     
  5. ondeadline

    ondeadline Well-Known Member

    The farce of the metered paywalls is that you can read all the stories you want if you just delete your cookies.
     
  6. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    So those who do the right thing and pay look like saps.
     
  7. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member


    The Times just rolled out a modest redesign of their website and it's very clean, very, very easy to read. But I'm paying a little more per month for it than my parents are paying per week for a print subscription (with digital thrown in), so you have to wonder...
     
  8. Roscablo

    Roscablo Well-Known Member

    This. I'm sure at some point newspapers will figure this easy loophole out. And it's not just cookies. Use different browsers and platforms and you'll get around it too. Every newspaper I read now has a paywall and I've never been denied content.

    Of course I don't know how much newspapers really care about it right now anyway. If they can get some people to pay they get that income. And those who don't pay the paper still gets the page view stats, which you know they ridiculously misrepresent to their benefit. On top of that many do other things so you can get the content for free if you want it. One I read doesn't count Facebook clicks against you, and they post almost all their local stories on FB. I know others that don't have a limit off Twitter links, and again, that's almost all their local content and it's updated frequently.

    If you don't want to pay and you want the content it's really not that hard to figure out.
     
  9. Kolchak

    Kolchak Active Member

    That's what my paper did. Free for all these years and then suddenly there's a pay wall. What's funny was how initially management boasted about how the pay wall subscriptions were better than projected (without ever giving out an actual number), then suddenly the boasting stopped and we never heard a peep about pay wall subscriptions again.

    What's not so funny? The pay wall is also in effect inside the freaking office!
     
  10. Cyrus

    Cyrus Member

    I subscribe to the Washington Post, g/f subscribes to NYT online. Trying to talk work into subscribing to Wall Street Journal.
     
  11. PaperDoll

    PaperDoll Well-Known Member

    Not if you're talking about a paper which primarily covers high school sports. In fact, I'm pretty sure sports <i>is</i> what steers subscriptions at smaller community newspapers -- both for the print product and online.

    That's a major reason I keep emphasizing prominent web placement of our local content. We get a daily pageview report on our various platforms, and local stories almost always lead.

    Unfortunately, my paper is part of a regional group which plays up coverage of the in-state D-I university and wire copy from pro events even though it's easily available elsewhere. Sigh...
     
  12. SpeedTchr

    SpeedTchr Well-Known Member

    Yes, several. Local and national. I also use pressdisplay.com, which is wonderful in my estimation.
     
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