Newsday to charge for Web access

If and when Internet-enabled television sets come around (any day now, they've been saying since 1995), Cablevision will be in position to offer viewers in NYC a service other paper's Web sites can't.

 

They don't have any competition, true, but they have ticked off the local population immensely. The paper's coverage of local hard news issues has fallen dramatically. The older, paper-friendly crowd complains that it only takes 15 minutes to read through Newsday. The paper appears to cater to the 25-39 crowd with its features, but that's not what makes people buy.

Honest to goodness, the stories about corrupt school board executives, retirement pensions, etc. are what drive people to that paper.

And, if you happened to notice, the LIRR disability phenomenon was brought to light by .... the New York Times.

Newsday needs to rededicate itself to hard, local news.

Otherwise, no one will pay for a thing on the Website. And all that traffic it has gotten is going to disappear -- fast.

 

As someone else pointed out: Wrong paper, wrong market, wrong time.

 

With Dolan's grubby paws on every single piece of business on the Island, that'll happen around the sixth of Never.

Someday, the obit will be penned for Newsday, but as far as I'm concerned, it died the day those pieces of shit took it over.

 

Fark's take:

Newsday to charge for web content, anticipating a huge response from people willing to pay for news about Long Island zoning board meetings

 

Allow me to translate: "Oh shit."

 

What about blogs? Lets say Glauber breaks something on his blog about free agency -- if no one sees it Newsday doesn't get credit for the scoop. They make themselves irrelevant in breaking news. And if you were to make that stuff visible, then don't you eliminate the value of subscribing?

The papers all need to jump at once or it doesn't work.

 

Exactly.
Hell, if I'm the News or the Post, I'd maybe stick a half-dozen reporters out on the Island and promote the hell out of my new FREE online content out there. And if I'm some civic-minded blogger in Oyster Bay or Islip, I'm licking my chops. Newsday will get eaten on both ends.
It's the right idea, I think, but Newsday can't do it alone in a market that's so competitive on the big stuff (pro sports, business, regional news) and so fractured on the small (countless small towns). They'll get clobbered.

 

It does occur to me that with the economy the way it is, I don't know many people who are looking at their budget and thinking, "Hmm, what can I start paying for that I haven't been paying for?"

 

Yeah, that's why whenever I'm in the airport and there's a discarded paper laying there, it's the sports section that's gone.
People aren't reading it, they're just carrying it around.

 

From the article:

What was this story?

As controlling -- and crazy -- as Dolan is, it can't be easy to cover the Knicks for Newsday.

 

The mistake was ever giving free access in the first place. I doubt you can put the toothpaste back in the tube now (especially if it's not an industry-wide move).

As for copying and pasting, there's gotta be a way to disable it. Google books has. I can't copy, print or save anything from there. The only thing I haven't tried is a screen grab, but they've probably figured out a way to disable that too. Ugh.