Columbia Missourian . . .has been behind a paywall for a few weeks

[Norrin Radd]

Best of luck to those students who want prospective employers to find their work online.

http://www.jschoolbuzz.com/columbia-missourian-to-charge-for-online-access-to-old-news/

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2012/08/27/dear-reader-why-membership-makes-difference/

Whoa-oh, here it comes. Watch out, boys, it's the actual student paper!

http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2012/9/14/missourians-paywall-disgrace-missouri-method/

 

[britwrit]

I'm a proud Missourian alum. Still, I suspect that 96% of Columbia's citizens will find it just as easy to not read the paper behind a paywall as they haven't read it for decades in every other format.

 

[Versatile]

Oh, I don't know. It would seem to me that any student journalist worth a damn these days could assemble a basic website to host clips and a resume. The pay wall could even help student journalists in that it prevents employers from seeing clips the student isn't proud of.

From a business perspective, it makes little sense. You can get all your current news for free, but we charge you for reading old stuff? I suppose the idea is to drive readers to the site on a daily basis. I'm not sure that's how it will work, though. I can't imagine why anyone would pay to read the old articles unless they plan on juicing up the pay content with things like old Pat Forde columns or similar measures. That would actually be kind of cool but probably still not worth the money. (I'm not sure Forde wrote for the Missourian, but you get the picture.)

 

[sgreenwell]

Oh, I don't know. It would seem to me that any student journalist worth a damn these days could assemble a basic website to host clips and a resume. The pay wall could even help student journalists in that it prevents employers from seeing clips the student isn't proud of.

Agree with this. Also, given the sometimes transient nature of the Internet - some things linger online forever, while others vanish overnight - being able to provide some hard copies of your work isn't a bad thing either.

 

[joe]

Oh, I don't know. It would seem to me that any student journalist worth a damn these days could assemble a basic website to host clips and a resume. The pay wall could even help student journalists in that it prevents employers from seeing clips the student isn't proud of.

From a business perspective, it makes little sense. You can get all your current news for free, but we charge you for reading old stuff? I suppose the idea is to drive readers to the site on a daily basis. I'm not sure that's how it will work, though. I can't imagine why anyone would pay to read the old articles unless they plan on juicing up the pay content with things like old Pat Forde columns or similar measures. That would actually be kind of cool but probably still not worth the money. (I'm not sure Forde wrote for the Missourian, but you get the picture.)

Of course Forde wrote for the Missourian. In the 1980s, any news-ed sequence student had at least two reporting semesters before graduation. I had two and worked between semesters a couple of times.

Watched Norm Stewart try to punk out Les Carpenter after a game one time when Les asked a question about Travis Ford being dehydrated and taking fluids in the hospital. I'm happy to see that Les has gone on to bigger and better things. And, no, I'm not Les.

More to the thread's point, I agree with britwrit that this just gives Columbians another reason not to read the Missourian. For all the students who work there as their first paying job, the Tribune blows away the Missourian and is the paper of record in Columbia. In sports, it helps that Joe Walljasper is a damn good writer and a damn good SE.