Slashdot Mirror
News Sites Getting to Know You
The Online Journalism Review has a story about more and more news sites requiring registration. Has assorted facts and figures, including how much sites' traffic dropped when registration was required. Even though a fair percentage of people just make up the data they are asked to provide, I'd guess that as a statistical measure it's probably pretty accurate - many people would tell the truth without caring that they're being tracked.
As a general matter, Slashdot's policy on linking to registration-required websites goes something like this:
The New York Times is okay, because they've got a lot of high-quality stories and they were essentially grandfathered in;
Other registration-required sites are not okay, and we won't post stories linking to them.
Kind of a shame, because the LA Times has some good content too, and we've posted lot of links to them in the past, before they went registration-required. Oh well.
Well, for things like /. , where there's a lot of "people power" in terms of mod'ing comments and the like, I can see why its useful.
But why (and I'm not complaining, I just don't understand) does NYTimes.com require it to read their stories? Marketing research? I have a hard time believing online registrations are doing them anything worthwhile (given how many times *I've* BS'ed a seemingly useless registration) in terms of research.
...have the mods create a uname/pw combination included in each relevant linked story and let the general /. population use those?
Personal information is worth so much these days.
Open up your sunday paper and look at all the great bargins you can get. Cd's for $14.99 with a $5 instant rebate and a $10 mail in rebate. Do you really think they are giving you the cd's for the price of the tax only? No. They are gonna sell the information you send them to get your rebate. And that information will be 100% correct.
Cool.
I can have one of my dozen or so phony-info Passport accounts manage my dozen or so phony news site logins!
Next Please...
I would post examples from The NYTimes, but they don't let you see previous issues of the paper online for free. However, as I recall their picks closely mirrored The Washington Post's:
The Washington Post
Top Story: Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
No. 2 Story: SEC Charges WorldCom With Fraud
No. 3 Story: U.S. Court Votes to Bar Pledge of Allegiance
The Los angeles Times
Top Story: 'Tweens: From Dolls to Thongs
One of the store mannequins wears a fringed denim skirt riding low on the hips and a top pushed high on the midriff. Another has shorts that roll down on the tummy and a one-shoulder top.
No. 2 Story: Pledge of Allegiance Violates Constitution, Court Declares
No. 3 Story: WorldCom Hit With Federal Fraud Lawsuit
The Los Angeles Times shows a consistent bias toward "Reader's Digest" type stories that are entertaining and give you something to gossip about but don't really tell you anything of value. I also get the sense that many LA Times reporters are really failed screenplay writers who can't let go of the need to create drama. However, they do occasionally print something worth reading.
The LA Times is owned by The Chicago Tribune , which puts even less original content on its Web site and is more "in-your-face" about pressuring you to subscribe.
I suspect Slashdot would link to The Wall Street Journal more often if the paper made more than 1% of its content available to non-paying subscribers. (I had a paid subscription to wsj.com for about a year, but I no longer do because it's just not worth that much to me.)
I'd like to read Le Monde , but the French refuse to publish an English version. Go figure.
All of Knight-Ridder's newspapers (The San Jose Mercury News , Miami Herald , Philadelphia Inquirer , et al) have been crippled by the "RealCities Network" which forces all of its sites to use the same content-poor, ad-rich design. The saddest story of the group is the SJMercury though, which has just fallen apart since the parent company began slashing costs and forcing the RealCities conformity on its once industry-leading site. The Miami Herald is an unofficial training school for future Washington Post reporters, but that doesn't matter if you can't find their content on the Web.
Slashdot doesn't link to the Financial Times often (ever?), though it's a great paper. It just doesn't turn out a lot of unique content that's of interest to most Slashdot readers.
Newspapers aside, Slashdot has linked to CNN and the BBC in the past, though not the CBC . ABC, CBS and NBC generally provide watered down news for people who don't like to read newspapers -- not Slashdot readers.
Slashdot often links to MSNBC , but I expect that will begin to decline -- MSNBC.com's founding editor (Merrill Brown, a former Washington Post reporter) recently announced that he's resigning after 6 years to pursue other, undisclosed "opportunities." The New York Times noted on June 12 (you'll have to pay for the archived version of the story) that he offhandedly mentioned that MSNBC.com is about to be swallowed by MSN for economic reasons. (In other words, Microsoft put its foot down and said financial concerns outweigh editorial concerns.)
The International Herald-Tribune writes some of its own content, but a lot of the paper is an amalgamation of New York Times and Washington Post stories.
I haven't read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Seattle Times in a while, but you may find some good technology stories there.
Bottom Line: Slashdot links to a disproportionate number of New York Times and Washington Post stories because both papers' sites post a lot of content and that content is top notch. It also helps that they're among the most recognizable names in journalism, but the Slashdot system is set up to allow editors to pick from the best stories that are submitted, regardless of the content provider's brand recognition. If you read a good story somewhere, submit it -- the quality of the story is more important than the misguided registration policies of the content provider. And if I've missed a good site people should be reading, reply to this message and let people know.
If everyone did this, they might soon realize that such annoying requirements were counterproductive.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I actually have a hotmail account that I use exclusively when I think that giving an account address out will invite spam. The account gets a lot of spam. :)
Here's a fancy trick you can use if you have your own domain: Set up the domain's email so that mail sent to undefined addresses is forwarded to you. Then, when a site like this wants an email address, give them something like latimes@yourdomain.com. This way, they'll be able to contact you, they won't have your real email address, you will not have spent any more effort than you would had you given them your real email address, you'll be able to shut down the address if they spam it, and you will also be able to tell if they sell your address (if you start getting pr0n spam at latimes@yourdomain.com, that's a sign).
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of the Corporate States of America...