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Regan MacNeil said:
It is. I am, however, a little pissed I didn't get my sub during a sale. If there's not a sale going on when my sub runs out, I'll probably wait until there is to renew.
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What's distinct? The feature writing? The newsbreaking?
 
Rosenthal is the best in baseball and Shams is basically tied with Woj in basketball. But their breaking news is free on Twitter.

And their longform is as good as anyone's. I just happen to like the voices they have more than other sites. They also have really good soccer coverage, which isn't easy to find.
 
Fredrick said:
It was impossible to be on board with this from Day One. People forget too quickly. Go back to Day One. What happened is the consultants and the IT types who installed the systems for individual newspapers told publishers they simply had to give the news away for free online. They said in this new online world, NOBODY would pay for news and they were insistent. The publishers instantly were on board. It's partly because they through the years made MOST of their money on advertising rather than subscriptions. They also have always devalued the work of reporters thinking anybody can write a story (remember the citizen journalism craze? Managing editors were all for it).
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This is revisionist history and just not true. First, there were papers who tried through other companies (see: Washington Post). For others, the technology wasn't there yet to properly set up a system to accept online payments. Then when newspapers went online, they treated it like a red-headed stepchild and sales people basically gave away ads for free or as add-ons, thus devaluing the online product.
 
CD Boogie said:
I can never imagine paying for The Athletic or any sports site. So little of what they can produce can possibly be that distinct -- or necessary -- from innumerable other sites. I subscribe to The New Yorker online for $8.99 a month, which also gives me access to their entire archive. I definitely get my money's worth.
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Congrats, you get news from one market for that price, while The Athletic subscribers can access articles from any market. That's quite possibly the biggest asset TA has....readers don't have to subscribe to 4-5 different websites to get the coverage they want if they like teams from different markets.
 
WriteThinking said:
Did it help to do that?
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Not sure, I'm not high enough in the food chain to have access to that info. I don't believe it hurt, however. Social media engagement seems far better than it was. And I don't have to copy my articles over to my personal blog in order to share them with people, which is nice.
 
Regan MacNeil said:
Rosenthal is the best in baseball and Shams is basically tied with Woj in basketball. But their breaking news is free on Twitter.

And their longform is as good as anyone's. I just happen to like the voices they have more than other sites. They also have really good soccer coverage, which isn't easy to find.
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Fair enough.
MNgremlin said:
Congrats, you get news from one market for that price, while The Athletic subscribers can access articles from any market. That's quite possibly the biggest asset TA has....readers don't have to subscribe to 4-5 different websites to get the coverage they want if they like teams from different markets.
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Wut? one market? I ain’t subscribing to the New Yorker for its sports coverage. They have correspondents all over the world.
 
I'm not paying The Athletic for ****. I can get free news almost anywhere on the web. I don't give a **** if they use fancier words or not. Paying for news in 2019 is retarded. It's everywhere. It's free. It's a new world baby.
 
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The Athletic provides great content and it is well worth the price. Not sure all the cursing is needed but you must feel passionately about not subscribing to it.
 
Doc Holliday said:
I'm not paying The Athletic for ****. I can get free news almost anywhere on the web. I don't give a **** if they use fancier words or not. Paying for news in 2019 is retarded. It's everywhere. It's free. It's a new world baby.
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It is hard for me to imagine anybody paying for content anywhere in 2019. The suits trained the world to expect online news for free. I'm sure 'readers' do not need to pay for content and still know everything they need to know about their teams. This one is the suits' fault. How can you ask people to pay now after conditioning them for over a decade they can read for free?
 
Fredrick said:
It is hard for me to imagine anybody paying for content anywhere in 2019. The suits trained the world to expect online news for free. I'm sure 'readers' do not need to pay for content and still know everything they need to know about their teams. This one is the suits' fault. How can you ask people to pay now after conditioning them for over a decade they can read for free?
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Exactly. Maybe if they'd been smart enough to charge for their content 25 years ago when the Internet started building an audience. But in 2019? No way am I paying for ****. It's everywhere for free. Hell, I'll just backdoor a few websites or google what I'm interested in. I'll find it somewhere and it won't cost a nickel.
 
flexmaster33 said:
Yeah...this is why papers should have been on board with this from Day 1...not decades after the fact.
Just saw a post the other day on Twitter about Netflix
"I like your content, I access it all the time, but how dare you expect me to pay $11 a month for the service"
Same with newspapers, why people just expect us to be there is beyond me.
If you value local news be willing to support it ... and yes, that means financially. Our subscription rate is far from breaking the bank.
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Don't want to offend anyone here who may still work at the Star Ledger, but it is now $1.50 Mon-Fri, $2.00 on Saturday and $3.00 on
Sunday, Can't swear to it, but pretty sure it didn't go to 50 cents until the late 90s early 00s. Fifteen years ago the paper also was a lot bigger.
I have a few buddies who coach hs sports and I still follow a few hs sports. The Ledger used to have results from at least 50 games on Sundays
with game stories from several. Now most Sundays there's maybe one game story per sport.
 
Everyone making the "all newspapers should've all done paywalls from the very beginning" argument is missing something really important: TV stations didn't. Here in Tulsa, we were behind a hard paywall when I got here. And we got virtually nothing from it -- no clicks, no subscribers, no ad revenue. Meanwhile, the TV sites dwarfed us in views. And many stories were stations rewriting us or chasing us (our old executive editor used to call stations and complain and get them taken down when it was too egregious). It took years to recover.

The only way that works for local news is if there is absolutely no other alternative, and in most cases, there is. Even in smaller towns, people will turn to Facebook pages that they get into for free rather than pay for a subscription to the local paper or a local news site. It's bull**** to say if we had done paywalls from Day 1, it would all magically be different. We did. And it didn't help. And unless every news source in an area did it, it wouldn't ever have. Hell, even then, in the early days, it likely would've just led to one person subscribing and then posting it on a message board or somewhere, and that site getting the clicks. it's a dream scenario, and it would've been great. But it wasn't a realistic business model until recent years as attitudes and tech have changed, and even in recent years, it's still not quite where it needs to be.
 
Fredrick said:
Why do they do it? No reason to. The suits made the decision when newspapers started their websites and there's no reason to pay.
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Just because you keep saying this is what happened doesn't make it accurate.
 
JRoyal said:
Everyone making the "all newspapers should've all done paywalls from the very beginning" argument is missing something really important: TV stations didn't. Here in Tulsa, we were behind a hard paywall when I got here. And we got virtually nothing from it -- no clicks, no subscribers, no ad revenue. Meanwhile, the TV sites dwarfed us in views. And many stories were stations rewriting us or chasing us (our old executive editor used to call stations and complain and get them taken down when it was too egregious). It took years to recover.
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This, right here.

In the pre-Internet days, there was a pretty clear separation between newspapers & electronic media. Now that everything is digital, TV stations put news on their websites (albeit often poorly-written and with very little depth - basically print versions of their 60-second hits) and promote their personalities, who foster a connection to viewers through being on TV all the time. While it's nowhere near the quality of newspaper journalism (and often, stories are borrowed after being reported by the newspaper first), that's enough. The reality is, most news consumers consider TV news the be-all, end-all of journalism and because its revenue model is based on cable subscriber fees and advertising on the 11 p.m. news. The (free) website is simply a promotional vehicle to get people to connect with that news station (and there's competition in town).

For those in print, the website IS the product, and while it provides depth and quality reporting, there's no other revenue stream than the website now that the printed page is declining or disappearing in many markets. If we charge and they're giving the news away for free, the vast majority of consumers will naturally go to what's free and assume that's all they need.

The problem is TV news is comparatively superficial and very consultant-driven. The reporting isn't often driven by what is good journalism, but what drives ratings (or what consultants believe drive ratings), and there's a lot of self-promotion packed into those newscasts. The ethical standards we hold ourselves to are a bit less there - especially in sports (just watch the local news in an NFL market on a Sunday, especially if the local team is in the playoffs. It's highly likely the anchors will be wearing team colors and even jewelry with the team logo, and often, the stations have paid arrangements with players to appear on their newscasts). There was a time when TV stations began trying to compete with newspapers by hiring journalists and columnists from newspapers - in our area, Rick Bozich and Bob Kravitz both going to TV. Not sure if Bozich is still in TV, but Kravitz was laid off by the highest-revenue TV station in Indiana in a cost-cutting move (which came at the same time the station sent the entire morning news over to Britain to cover the royal wedding, which has no news value in Indiana that couldn't be covered by NBC). The revenue/readership on the "free" website for those columnists just wasn't deemed worth the cost.

Unfortunately, in many of these markets, people will then wonder how they elected so many corrupt public officials. The tiny suburban daily (once 10K circ, now about 5K) I used to work for has broken stories that has led to the arrest of several elected officials (including a significant graft case), exposed problems at the local animal control, et al. Without money, those stories don't get reported. No TV station is going to care about local town/county government in a suburban county (much less have time to investigate city government in the metro). Those stories don't generate enough ratings to be worth the cost, even if they are newsworthy.
 
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