Slashdot Mirror
More Online Publishers Inching Toward Paid Content
mattmcal writes "TheStreet.com reported its first quarterly profit with $18 million of its $26 million in revenues coming from subscriptions. WSJ.com is now up to 686,000 online subscribers. Several publishers have failed to build successful paid models in the past, such as the San Jose Mercury News, but subscription revenue is crucial during ad market dips. More and more publishers are testing these waters now that the evidence of success has become real. Washingtonpost.com and Media Guardian UK both announced recently they will require registration. This may be just the beginning of a mad rush to drop a registration gate on the major news sites."
I have NO REGRETS about paying to subscribe to Slashdot and the New York Times.
The extra features I get as a Slashdot subscriber are well worth the cost, and getting the Times news fresh every morning with my cup of coffee is unbeatable. I love their fresh angle on each news story, and really appreciate the Editorials page.
Count me in, America - I'm a happy online news subscriber - and lovin' it!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
This may not be a complete disaster, as a it will provide a stimulation to the micropayment technologies, which could be useful to subsidise low cost environments such as open source content projects e.g. wikipedia.
The marginal cost to the really big (Fox, CNN) and/or publicly funded institutions (BBC) of providing web-based news is probably pretty low, and it is effectively a loss leader to bring people into their portal, so there is not really an incentive to charge, so I don't think free general news is disappearing any time soon.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
I have definitely been noticing this trend and I don't like it one bit, but it doesn't seem there is very much I can do about it apart from abandoning some web sites that are not too essential.
For example, I haven't gone to www.washingtonpost.com since they introduced their new "super-nosy" registration policy (and I used to go there almost every day). On some other web sites I give fake information(OK this doesn't really solve anything, but dammit I am not going to let them win...)
In any case, I can easily forsee the day when there won't be any "free" news sites that do not require registration. Except the Onion. There will always be the Onion. (Knock on Wood...).
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
Is the backlash that will come from a lot of the /.ers who act as if everything that is run with a 1 or a 0 should be free or open source. This kind of model is necessary for online publications to continue to thrive. Hearing that consumers are buying into it is extremely heartening news.
Lexis-Nexis has been doing this for a long time, and making a nice profit. It's not new.
For those of us who hate to spend gazillions of dollars on newspaper subscriptions, and want to get the content on paper for free online, only to watch publishers lock up their content to require payment yet again, I have a proposal.
Just step away from free, and turn it into cheaper. For example, you give xyz newspaper $10 as a deposit. At any time you can opt to buy today's online content of that newspaper (or other online content) for $0.50. It gets you the rights to the entire content for the day, and maybe even a PDF you can download and read/print offline. This way you don't pay outrageous prices for subscriptions to memberships and read what you want. Thoughts?
...in bed
what money would a newspaper make from giving their whole content for free on the net - it has been proved that advertising on websites is certainly not the best method of advertising available! so obviously as paper gets less and less popular, they are going to have to move to online editions almost exclusively and why not make people pay for the latest news - maybe it's not right from the consumers point of view, but as a business it's all the newspapers can do! Tim
tim
this is alright i suppose. a lot of services charge a small yearly fee. as long as it's not an exhorbitant amount paid monthly just to rip off for profit
Don't let this karma whore post at +2 again. He'll be all over you with his stupid comments.
Worth looking at paidcontent.org </a> which give a 3rd party view of subscription services
rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
Does anybody else find it odd that to read about wsj.com bragging about its subscriber base, you have to spend a $59 registration?
You think this is the latest news story on slashdot, but subscribers can beat the rush and see the real newest story early!
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
i think online media is cheaper than the printed media, and more environment friendly as well. and if if we have to pay a little bit to get online news, it is not that bad.
you can buy e-books and audio books that are cheaper than printed books. on itunes you can buy radio show, to listen at your leisure
So, what is wrong with paying a little bit money to read the news that your own leisure
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
As someone who reads through news every single day of the year, I'd love an option to offer small payments for content that I specifically want. If I was paying $5.00 for each news article I convert to a PDF, I'd be broke in no time. Slashdot has talked about micropayments before.
DigitalPanic.net
i wouldn't be surprise if slashdot becomes a subscription only site!!!!
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I've been a happy subscriber for many months. Their coverage of everything Linux is unsurpassed! Subscribe to LWN.
How much is slashdot making in it's subscription service?
Actually, I'm surprised this didn't happen a whole lot sooner. The newspapers' attitudes for a long time seemed to be:
1) Give away all the content we normally charge for.
2) ???
3) Profit!
I won't give info to the NY Times or Washington Post because I haven't been entirely thrilled with their privacy policies. I wish someone could come up with a happy medium so that content providers could actually get paid, the cost would be minimal (since no printing/shipping is involved), and privacy issues could be resolved. Perhaps I'm asking for too much.
It's a nice way for higher-quality pubs to maintain their offerings, but they should expect some heat over the equal-access problem that paid content creates. If it's a choice between existing and not existing, then a quality site should offer subscriptions. But neither time nor bandwidth are free (unless you use a trojan to hijack some Windows box), and paid content is a fair way to get a return on an investment.
Still, just as there's a movement to give net access to low-bandwidth users in developing countries, perhaps there should be a similar push for content availability that is stratified by country.
Before a content site decides to put up any kind of barrier to getting the content, they'd better make sure the value will drive people past the barrier.
An example comes to mind in the local news scene... I used to visit one of the Web sites for a local TV station as a way to keep informed about local events. Their content was "pretty good" -- better, as I saw it then, than their competitors. Then they started requiring registration... it was free, but they wanted your personal info. I turned away and haven't gone back -- the value of their content was not sufficient to push me past the privacy barrier.
One of the reasons I've been hesitant to use any revenue-related barriers in the Open Music Registry is because I don't think the value would support it, for the site as it is now. So, until I have the time to build in features that people might pay for (if that ever happens), I have to hope for donations and ad click-throughs.
No Laughing Allowed!
This is definitely a chance to put Microsoft's Passport system to work. Here's the idea; put your credit card number into passport and then when you go to a news site and want to read an article; $0.10 is deducted from your cc/passport account. I can't wait to see their passport system working for something that is actually useful; as opposed to just using it on their sites (msn/hotmail/microsoft.com).
Ok so I don't object. Depending upon the site, these companies better come up with something that no one else can before I subscribe to them. Simple news? Oh no I can get it for free from so many other sources. Now considering sites like Washington Post, and Guardian allow other sites to mirror their content, why would I pay for the Washpost, if I could find a free site posting their very own content?
Again not to be too critical, but it's the same with newspapers if you think about it. Should I buy today's New York Times? Hell no, I could go into the conference room, or get my co-workers' copy. Good luck to the news sites for trying to come up with a plan, it will work to some extent, but they'd be losing a hell of a lot of viewers to some extent as well.
MoFscker
However, I'm sure many websites could get away with it either because their target audience has the cash to drop on it, or they need the service bad enough. Like it or not, I'm sure the NYTimes could make their site subscription only (or only if you have a regular paper subscription with them) and people would still sign up.
My grudge with IGN is that they decided to charge for their bad reviews and images/movies. There are god knows how many other gaming sites out there offering the same things for free. And lets face it, gamers don't usually have money to drop on a website subscription (they'd rather put it towards a game).
Some websites decide not to be greedy and have found a near perfect balance of content vs. price. Take www.Freshlymixed.com for example. An excellent site and the best site to download Essential Mixes from Radio 1 on (among other mixes). For signing up for free, you get to use bit torrent and download the three most recent Essentail Mixes, but only on weekends. For paying like, $2/month you get access to their archive whenever you want. There are other payment options too. They decided not to be greedy, and guess what? They're probably making MORE money because of it! There will always be that certain point where if you charge more, you'll make less money because you'll simply get less customers.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
So paid is the way to go but so many registrations, so many usernames, so many passwords and so much content left unread.
It would be neat if there could be a single authentication protocol where one could use the same user/pass (a passport.com like open source or free authentication method) which worked anywhere and which one could tie to any micropayment based payment gateway to read and possibly OWN (in case you visit later) any content you bought at any of the sites.
The above post was brought to you by McDonald's. I don't know about you, but i'm lovin' it!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
is just going to widen the "digital divide". This might work great in europe/u.s., where you all have your fancy electronic bank accounts, but us broke MOFO's? in countries where there is no infastructure for this will be further pushed aside. I guess I'll be depending on the "pirates" to copy some info to a free site somewhere.
What?
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
Yahoo includes launchcast and much more. blah blah blah. Basically, the world is an online service, and we are merely watchers.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
Untily relatively recently, I enjoyed Google News. I broke down and did the free reg. at NYTimes, but then Washington Post and the LA Times started it: now Charlotte.com and Bum-Fouck Iowa are getting in on the act.
I simply refuse to read those papers, and have basically stopped using Google News. When will these people learn that the only reason we use their content is the pleasure of it -- and we aren't stupid. When they try to turn us into cattle or eyeballs, we bolt.
I fully expect everything that doesn't suck now to start sucking soon. On a related note, I am planning to cancel my cable soon. It will soon be $60/month for just basic cable.
I just won't watch TV. It will suck, but I will adjust. I am not a slave.
..of where a paid content system and a free content system work flawlessly together. Internet users tend not to invest in a service/website unless they have an incentive. In fark.com's case they offer access to all submitted links and no ads. All in all the best way to entice people to pay for content is to give them a reaonable amount of functionality under a free membership. If they enjoy your free content many will tend to become paid subscribers later on.
It's been said before, but I think it's important to stress the necessity of a pay per content / service model.
Most classical online ads; whether banners or popups don't pay off, and while some people still live with the mindset of free information for all, there's a limit to the quality and quantity you can produce without profits.
A feasible business model:
It's necessary to reorganize and produce quality information in such a way that it separates itself from the bulk and becomes valuable. When you do that, you can charge people for it - and you'll need to, because quality content requires professionals [whether journalists, consultants, counselors, programmers etc. ].
What about ads?
I used to be doing online adverts, and while advertising won't disappear, I am convinced that it will change it's nature, moving towards an interval-between-content model like the one we have on TV. As a user you'll be able to pay to avoid them in available subscription packages:
As web-content becomes more media intensive, in terms of streaming - I suspect we will see complex interactive adverts targeted at users based on profiles. I foresee "pay-per-view" media-service packages that range from the-premium-no-ads-in-movies, news, games-offer, to "free" content with ad-intervals.
What are your thoughts on/experiences with current e-payment models? (paypal, micropayments etc).
As an entrepreneur, I'd appreciate any info.
Finally - to quote the blues brothers: What do ya want for nothing? Rubber buiscuit?
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
"The marginal cost to the really big (Fox, CNN) and/or publicly funded institutions (BBC) of providing web-based news is probably pretty low, and it is effectively a loss leader to bring people into their portal, so there is not really an incentive to charge, so I don't think free general news is disappearing any time soon."
If nothing else, there's Yahoo!. I notice that Yahoo! carries content from LA Times and the Washington Post, among others, so I'm able to access their content registration-free via Yahoo!. So that's where I've been reading the most lately -- particularly using Yahoo! news' RSS feed and a newsreader software.
With declining readership with newspapers, along with lower-than-originally-thought payments from advertising, however -- so-called "premium" content -- the really valuable news -- will probably end up being for-pay. In other words, I think you're going to see more pay content on the web because people are abandoning dead-tree media.
I've been involved with two pay sites. The first is financial site The Motley Fool, the second is a college sports recruiting-news site, Rivals.com. I think that both sites' pay services illustrate really well the extremes of the pay-site model.
In the former case, The Motley Fool made their bulletin boards into part of their pay service. Their actual home-generated content remained free. This struck me as being a horrible decision, because the value of the boards was provided by the posters who contributed information and advice on the boards -- they were, in fact, trying to reduce traffic to their boards. If I'm going to be contributing value to their boards, I should get paid for it -- not the other way around. I found the move to pay offensive, and quit.
Rivals.com (specifically texas.rivals.com) is the opposite story. I am a college football junkie, and Geoff Ketchum, who runs the Texas Longhorns board is a true journalist -- the kind who actually works for a living, rather than just barfing up whatever PR he happens to receive or reporting every rumor that he hears as fact. For just five bucks a month, I get information that no one else gets, and I typically hear about the big stories long before anyone else does. There are two regular columns each week that are stuffed with things nobody else knows about, plus constant reports on the latest high-profile recruits, where they want to go, etc.
Jesus, I sound like an ad. Well, it's because I'm very happy to spend the money for the content, because the content has value -- I can't get it anywhere else -- and it's something very specific that interests me.
So, the summary of what I'm trying to say here is this: The move to pay is necessary for some folks who either can't afford to go to print, or who are losing income from print publications, because the internet ad model has proven to be not very good. And people will pay for sites that generate valuable content, but they won't pay just to participate in "communities."
To me, it actually seems like an improvement.
Washingtonpost.com and Media Guardian UK both announced recently they will require registration
And not-so-coincidentally, Washingtonpost.com has been removed from my list of bookmarks.
More online business for the other newspapers, I guess.
You are basically talking about AOL which in (now don't laugh) addition to being an ISP (I told you not to laugh) is also a content provider. You can for some fee access their "exclusive" content from non aol-connections.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Is someone with a single-sign on system (ala Passport or Liberty) will try and sell a "meta" account, that gives you access to multiple papers ..
meh
Some newsppaper sites have indeed started charging for some of their content. But I don't think that this means a shift back to the subscription model, which never did generate enough revenue to matter. More likely, they want to raise the apparent value of content they syndicate to other newspapers.
I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I'll say it again: online content won't succeed until you can pay for it as you consume it. Yes, I mean Micropayments. Lots of pundits have fancy reasons why micropayment can't work, but nobody really knows, because nobody's really tried it.
"The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!"
...
Glad to see slashdot has escaped the trend
I have a hunch what we're seeing, especially in the case of the WSJ, is that people that previously subscribed to the print version of the paper are migrating to the online content for convenience.
The real question is can they attract new customers to pay for online content, as opposed to shifting existing customers from one type of media to another.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
..phone accounts in the UK. The Business model is already proven here. Might actually work tekiegreg!
This kinda reminds me of AOL's inflated subscription numbers because they were giving out free months to people who'd call to cancel.
I don't think mandatory/discounted/student/group subscriptions should be counted in this figure.
With daily repeated references to NYT, and almost as frequent references to WashPost, /. story submitters are certainly doing there part to help out the big media cartels.
/. readers will always opt for the blue pill. Some will wake up. Which are you?
No problem. The cartels can't ignore Google. And I can get their stories through Google News. Better yet, virtually none of the media cartels are original anymore. They exist as mere web content providers for AP, UPI, Reuters. Plus a few local/capitol reports thrown in to throw the scent off. The good part about this is if any of the registration sites regurgitate a news story from one of the wires, it is also picked up by thousands of regional and local news sites, the vast majority of which don't require registration. The same goes for the few original "news" pieces they report on. The thousands of other sites pick it up for their local editions, and the content is still available without registering.
Google News is your friend. And the friend of freedom, by freeing information, instead of attempts to control information as it comes out of NYT, WashPost, and others.
And WashPost doesn't render in my browser correctly anyway. The main column is still offset about 800 pixels to the right, forcing me to scroll over.
The only real informational value coming from the NYT and the WashPost anyway is to document the bias of the two outlets, made easier when comparing their headlines, first paragraphs, and top of fold stories against the rest of the media outlets on Google News.
Registration? No biggie. Go here (and read the same story from different sources) for a more balanced view.
Some
on both economic and environmental grounds, i applaude filching someone else's paper. how often have i done that at work, in a coffee shop, or even (ahem) liberating one from the "trash." especially the Times. :)
/.'er (thanks).
now, we can all read these things for free at the library -- is there not a place here for the library to offer its patrons pooled access to these newspapers? you then eliminate wealth discrimination and a host of other problems; the publications can assure themselves of steady revenue. there are ways to fiddle with the equations, such as limiting concurrent access to a given paper or offer bells and whistles for subscribers, that might iron out some details.
i mention this because our library offers free access to various e-books, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, normally a pricey annual subscription) and a host of other databases including even some ($$$) WSJ articles. these resources are poorly publicized but wonderful. i only know about our OED access because of a helpful
What I object to is news organizations that gather information in the name of the public good or the "public's right to know," then put up barriers to public access to that information.
Which is it, guys? If you want to use my name to make your bones, then you gotta share the benis.
I go out and spend around $20 a month on magazines, usually cars or 4x4's. I've enjoyed the magazine format for years now except for a couple of things.
If you miss on issue and they have a project broke up over multiple months it costs a lot to back order a copy and it is a hassle.
After getting 2 or 3 magazines a month for a few years you end up with a huge pile that I want to keep the information in but I don't really want to devote part of my library to.
I see some subscription based websites that mimic the magazine format but none of the big names are doing it and non of the small guys post up as much as I'd get in a magazine.
I'd be willing to pay for an online subscription to something like SCC so long as it has every bit on information thats in the printed version. This includes the Ads. I hate popups, but I do browse the parts ads on a regular basis so make sure they're in there. Hell charge the advertiser more and make the ads a link the companies site, that would be useful.
I also want the archive from the day you go online accessible. I won't accept just being able to get this months and thats it.
Everything also has to be in a standard format. PDF or HTML is fine, some encrypted format that is windows only and requires a special viewer and the deal is off.
What I'm not willing to pay money for is hacked down versions that show 3 out of 10 stories.
I think it is unfortunate that the media is becoming less and less accessable in this manner. Perhaps one day only the rich will have access to "good" media and the poor will be left with the National Enquirer (or even worse...slashdot! ;> ).
While this is a doomsday scenario and a logical extreme, this is the direction things are headed. I beleive access to the media should be as unencumbered as possible. The WWW is a (relatively) new and largely additional revenue source for the media, and again they are trying to suck evey cent from it that they can. Sad that profit can come between people and (possible) truth or information.
I have some insight into a NYTRG paper and have seen this issue from both sides of the fence.
One of the major issues is management (aren't they always getting in the way). Many papers are still run by people who have no idea how to utilize the internet. When a paper such as the WSJ makes an announcement about subscription revenue, the managers say, "Works for them, so it should work for us, let's fire up the registration servers!"
Unfortunately things that play at a major paper such as the WSJ or the NYT don't awlays translate to success at a small paper.
And the Washington Post and the New York Times do not have vested interests?
This may be just the beginning of a mad rush to drop a registration gate on the major news sites.
It'll be a mad rush when and only when the Onion requires a subscription.
Long live Schrodinger's cat...
At least in the world of free books (as opposed to free newspaper articles, which I don't know much about), I think the general trend is toward more freedom -- my catalog has certainly grown greatly over the last few years. I think it's a lot like Linux invading the desktop: when the percentages are small, it's easy to get double-digit growth in a year.
It is frustrating to see free stuff go away, though. That's why I think it's so important for people to put their writing under a Creative Commons license. Free-as-in-speech is forever. Free-as-in-beer is like the hooker who doesn't remember your name the next weekend.
Find free books.
You have stopped using Google News because the NYtimes charges money? This makes no sense. Have you not noticed the green "and related" link under every header on google?
If there is a story you want to read in the Google news headlines, but the link goes to a register site, just click the "and related" link and find usually hundreds of the same story at other sites that are free.
Thats the beauty of Google News. You can read the spin on the same and similar stories from lots of different sites to get a broader view.
Im already paying to get online, why should i have to pay for content as well?
We have to suffer thru advertisments already...
If i wanted to pay for content, id buy a f-ing newspaper or magazine.. Something that will actually last for a while, and wont go away or be changed on the publishers whim...
Nickel and diming the internet ( and life in general ) to death..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just use the cpunks logins:
NYT: cpunks8/cpunks or cpunks9/cpunks or cpunks10/cpunks10
WaPo: cpunks@cpunks.org/cpunks
There are important differences between the services offered by the Wall Street Journal online and the Washington Post online that would allow the first to charge a subscription and the second not to. The WSJ offers relatively unique business-specific information and has no close competitors. Their news and analysis are essential to conducting business, at least in the US. By contrast, the Washington Post offers excellent coverage of general news, but with many close substitutes such as the NYT, CNN, and the BBC among others. Some of those competitors unlikely to ever charge an online subscription (CNN, BBC), so the Washington Post can't either (isn't it nice when competition works?)
It's all about demand elasticity. The freely available NYT charges a fee to access their archived articles because those who use that service are typically involved in some research project, and their demand for information is inelastic (not too many substitutes for the NYT's extensive archives). On the other hand, The for-pay WSJ makes its editorial content available for free at opinionjournal.com, because nobody would pay to read editorials; as they say, opinions are like a-holes, everybody's got one.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
The extra features I get as a Slashdot subscriber are well worth the cost, and getting the Times news fresh every morning with my cup of coffee is unbeatable
They include a cup of coffee with the subscription?
...with Zinio , which gives you the exact duplicate of their printed page, with a kind of a pdf format which zooms in and out to fit your screen (handy for laptops). Some major magazines such as Business Week, PC Magazine and others are available; free samples are available.
Locking up the news after a week or ten days, as others have pointed out, is a big problem as well.
I've tried wget -m type commands to archive daily news from a few news sites, but I haven't figured out how to get what I need. I'd like to get the dozen or so international and national stories that are normally linked from the front page, and usually found under site.com/national and site.com/international for example, but I end up with much more, including an entire week's worth. I'd like to run this command once a day, capturing just the relevant day's news.
Anyone using this command to do something similar? Capturing a couple dozen html files (even without pictures) is an easy way to create a local repository of relevant news for several sources, yet limiting how much is saved and thereby saving disk space (and bandwidth).
Anyone have a wget (or other) example command line that works for saving several news sites, just national/international sections, or something that can be modified to do the same?
How close is the nearest library? If it's more than a mile away, the cost of gas to get there and back is more than the cost of a delivered paper. If it's more than a couple of blocks away, the cost of the time to walk there (at US minimum wage) is more than the cost of the paper.
(I'm assuming that you're going to go read the Journal, which is $1US everywhere-- local papers vary from place to place, of course, but they're almost always cheaper than that anyway.)
" i think online media is cheaper than the printed media,"
I think that the sky is green, but facts sometimes mess that up.
NY Times and Wash Post are cheaper now, only because they're free. But in actual fact, when you subscribe to the washington post, if you buy Sundays at a discount, then the rest of the week is free. So you pay somewhere around $50 a year (more or less) for the wash post.
But wait...when you get the print edition, the sunday paper has ads and coupons that can easily pay the cost of the paper. Online... nothing.
So the economics of online will never make it cheaper than actual newsprint.
Another example is online magazines. I can subscribe to the print version of most magazines for $13/year or under. Not so for the online versions; they will typically cost 2x or 3x that amount.
That's why outside of the WSJ (a special interest newspaper), there is no successful pay-per-view or subscription general interest newspaper. The economics arne't there and they probably never will be.
If MSN and Yahoo are free, then you'd better be pretty special to charge. NYTimes and WashPost aren't special enough.
Hi:
It costs them to make, they charge ad space in paper to make a profit. Why should on-line be any different?
Besides, I thought giving content ayway on line for free in the hopes of establishing market share in time for an IPO and you'll figure out a way to leverage the subscriber base at some point in the future when the venture capital money runs out was disproved as a business strategy in April 2000 when NASDAQ crashed.
.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
They own their corporations and...
They can do anything they want, however when you want to access 90 different news sites at 20 dollars a pop you can do the math, the money ain't there for the average person. So this is perhaps good and bad, since they have "Freedom of the Press" they can go into shopping malls and video, the small guy can't, they can charge money and slant their news angle till the cows come home. (I guess I kind of got sidetracked here) Anyway, what pisses me off is the small guy doesn't get the same "Freedom of the Press" rights as the big guys. So I wonder if diminishing return will snarl them up or they just gain more power to screw the sheeple again. After all the whole country is going to hell anyway with all the liberal judges. I guess the small guy gets fscked again.
"What somebody should do is come up with an standardized anonymous way to pay for things, just like a prepaid phone card."
Sorry, no longer allowed in the US--I'm not joking. There used to be some options like this, but now they all have to be verified with a SS number (aptly named for the future, perhaps).
In a country where the definition of "financial institution" has been expanded to include casinos and pawn shops (and thus allow warrantless examination of their customer records), anonymity in commerce is a rapidly dying right. And if you demand it, well, then what kind of evildoer are you--a terrorist, child porn addict or drug dealer?
The belief that just because something is done online makes it profitable is one that many have learned the fallacy of the hard way. The internet makes a great content delivery system for a valid marketable product, but not so great for advertising and definitely not good for cash appearing from nowhere. (Note: most internet ads are for crap products, if they expressed valid product info for decent products I might bite. Same flaw with most advertising though, they appear to assume people are far too impressionable. Almost terrifying to think that they're right in many cases.)
MMV but I for one would not pay for an online newspaper subscription, while I will pay to have a traditional print copy delivered. I'm a stubborn bastard too, I dislike even "free registration required" sites *cough*NYT*cough* unless there is some definite benefit to be gained. Benefit of doubt that such a scenario exists where it would be in my interests to register to even view someone's website. Similar to people that scream bloody murder over "deep linking" and with equal (in)validity IMO.
In response to parent, paying for a Slashdot subscription is a bit of a misnomer. You're basically putting money in the tip jar; the subscriber benefits are nice but nothing ultra-significant. They're just there by way of the PTB thanking those that help out with what I would assume to be a massive bandwidth bill. This is a community site first and always.
I can't say I care at all about the traditional media companies locking themselves behind barriers. I only read weblogs anyway.
I suppose it might be a self defense manoever for them - it stops them from having to look like complete idiots when some blogger points out they made something up, or spun a story beyond recognition.
As long as you can read maybe three commercial news sources, you can can tell what all the others are saying anyway. Commercial news is designed to package and disseminate the same information to many people, rather than many different kinds of information about the same event. It's a horrible model, and it suffers particularly badly from the "who guards the guardians" syndrome.
I have little or no respect for the traditional media, so here is one person that won't be crying if they decide to marginalise themselves.
Some forms of paid-for news are probably worthwhile, but on the whole I can't help feeling that the weblog phenomenon is the first sign of a drastic change in how people will get their news in the future.
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I recently purchase a US$29.95/yr subscription to the New York Times tracker. Personally I think the service is utter crap. Not worth the money to me, except that I was required to sign up for it as a portion of a class I'm taking so in that sense it is worth it.
I know how much work is involved in providing content, and if it's good/something I'm interested in I think a format that's well done is worth a couple bucks. I'm actually considering purchasing an upgraded webmail acct from excite.com because I think their free webmail rocks and they're doing a pretty good job controlling the spam. IMO they completely blow away msn and yahoo... maybe just maybe worth a few bucks too.
- Must be value for money
- must not include advertising
- must not ever infringe on my privacy
- Must be value for money (seriously, it's worth saying several times)
Anyone surreptitionsly following my surfing habits will see a very clear pattern emerging- sites with advertising filtered by my ad/popup blocker get return visits (assuming they have good content)
- sites which successfully bypass my filters never see me again
- sites which require me to register never see me again (unless I can screw their database, like NYTimes)
- Sites with stuff I *really* want that I can't get elsewhere for free (or that provide significant value *over* free), I subscribe to (eg FilePlanet, paid email service, etc)
It's surprising how difficult online content providers find understanding the most basic of facts. PISS of your customers and they won't return. The ever-more-annoying and in-your-face Advertising model just doesn't work. (Phear My Filters)I'm not unreasonable, I'd happily pay fair-value for good content, all I ask in return is
- MicroPayments
- Security
- Privacy
- Zero advertising
- Value For Money
- Value For Money
- Value For Money (seriously, it's worth asking for several times, they're NOT GETTING THE MESSAGE)
An example given earlier of $5 for an article isn't value for money, it's a ripoff. Even if it is "archived". Geez man, everyone who *really wanted* your article got it when it was current, additional "sales" now would have to be pure profit - your entire DeadTrees publication costs what , $5.75 a week (eg NYTimes DeadTrees Edition)? And you wanna charge me $5 an article, electronic delivery?How do companies who list "customer goodwill" as a line item on their company valuations balance that against actively screwing their customers (privacy violations, information-highway-robbery) and doing their best to just plain piss them off (guerilla advertising campaigns) in the online world?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I would have no problem paying for News and such content. My major gripe is the lack of pictures and or videos in the news content. Most online news sites rearly have any pictures associated with the news article, and when they do have one or two, they are all nice and small. If these news paper providers gave me well written articles, with decent pictures or size and quality, and give me the opertunity to setup my own "virtual news paper" I could have e-mail to me each day, I would be more than happy to pay. Until then... no.
Free music, free movies, free news, free softw...oops not that one.
Online Advertisements revenues are down big time. It's all fine and good if you have a little website offering free content and footing the bill maybe 20-30 a month. But once that site hits critical mass and starts getting a major amount of hits. It can start getting expensive. Do you expect someone to start footing the bills of 100+ monthly so you can continue getting your free content?
Because many articles are syndicated, when an article I want to read is on a news site requiring registration (other than NYT and WP, both of which I bit the bullet on and registered for because they're simply essential), I can usually find the same article on another site. GoogleNews helps me read what I want without registering by letting me (via keyword/keyphrase search) find multiple publishers of the same article! For hot news stories, there are always a gazillion articles saying virtually the same thing, and GoogleNews thoughtfully groups them together so I can view one that doesn't require registration. (Have you noticed how often newspapers take an Associated Press story, make superficial changes, and then pass it off as original content???)
GoogleNews is even more valuable because the ability to bypass registration-only websites discourages newspapers from erecting walls. If ten papers run the same Associated Press article but eight require registration, which one do I visit? If everyone did this, only newspapers with original content could erect barriers.
Content duplication similarly helps me dig up archived articles that newspapers want me to pay $5 to view. I can frequently find the same article somewhere else via GoogleNews or Google.
I suggest you have no sense of humor.
Posts about peepee, poopoo, and multi-ethnic sodomy aren't exactly what I call humour. You see, I've passed that age. You obviously haven't.
Since it seems that so many articles are just reprints from the associated press, there will always will at least one website with a copy of the very same article for free. I say "Let them charge for subscriptions!". I'll go somewhere else. That is the beautiful thing about this crazy World Wide Web.
The problem with charging access is that you are under the gun to deliver great content every day without a burp. The WSJ had some great content but on many days it was just rehashing the wire feeds. Sorry, but I can get AP and Reuters elsewhere for free.
you want me to pay, I don't wanna pay, so I don't. I'll do without or find free alternatives. Guess that takes care of the whole deep linking issue though huh?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
That sounds a lot like the days before the WWW (and the internet in general) made it into the household. CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, GEnie and QuantumLink (pre-AOL), all were dial up content providers. You got news, weather, chat, games, and messaging... essentially a large scale dial-up BBS. And of course you still had a lot of BBSes around, though very few charged except the big multi-line ones. (gotta cover the phone bills)
Sounds like we're heading back in that direction. Which kind of makes sense. The ad revenue model just doesn't work on a broad scale. And content providers want to get paid. I doubt many people will want to have 20 different pay subscriptions.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
More like "Welcome back..."
When you pay your ISP $9.95 per month, you buy a connection to the internet. Your ISP makes no guarantee about what you'll find on the internet. They provide connections, not content. If you're a dedicated Slashdot reader who doesn't visit any other websites, and Slashdot closes down, do you expect your ISP to refund your subscription? Of course not. They didn't promise that Slashdot would be online. They only promised that you would be.
For that matter, why not carry your question in the other direction? Your ISP connects your computer to someone else's content. If you think your ISP fee should entitle you to free content, then shouldn't it also entitle you to a free computer? You might as well say, "I'm already paying to get online. Why should I have to pay Apple for this new PowerBook, too?"
crib
Please don't read my journal
In my expert opion on this matter there is
****to read the rest of this comment deposit 35 cents into my paypal account.
I live in NY, and the NY Times here costs $1 a day and $3 Sundays. How exactly do they make money by having all the content online for free? Ads? Isn't clickthrough ads a near dead business (or is it still lucritive? no idea...)
So why exactly do they allow people to browse for free?
I swear, I'm not trolling. Seriously.
Every time a NYTimes story is posted to Slashdot, it's accompanied by a slew of quips and complaints about registration. In the comments below, myriad people have griped about registration for the LATimes, the Washington Post, and other news sites.
Can someone offer a reasonable explanation why these registrations are so bad? They're not particularly invasive. They're free. They allow random, blatantly false information to be given. So what's the problem?
I think it's amazing that I can read the NYTimes every day, free. Same goes for those other newspapers and websites. If the Wall Street Journal was free, I'd be happy to fork over my name and address to read it online. I don't understand the general objection: You can spend a dollar daily and read it on paper, or you can give your name -- or ANY name -- and read it online free, for years.
How is that a rip-off?
crib
Please don't read my journal
An interesting idea, but then if /. did require subscriptions, it would lose out on thoughtful/informative/insightful commentary from those that aren't willing to pay.
/. so interesting/insightful/informative/funny is its VERY large and (arguably) diverse geek-community user base, the vast majority of which, I suspect, don't pay to suscribe.
This isn't to disrespect those who do suscribe. But my point is that part of what makes
I for one am not worried.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I'm interested. Can you point me to a few sites?
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Now, I like slashdot, /.ers are quite funny especially the trolls. But finding a good political news source seems all but impossible. Even the times interjects biased attempts at logic in place of what could have been truthful facts. I only like editorials of readers, most editorial writers are glorified /. trolls who talk politics not tech,
So my fear is this: Trusting a news source, I think not. And by subscribing I will tend to offer trust in them.
Plus I'm sure they will probably try to overcharge. Anymore than $5 a year would be a rediculous price.
I also hate logging in, just a pet peeve to remember all the usernames and passwords. Even though I only keep a few.
Ultimatly, paid content mean informations for the richs and ignorance for the poors.
And.. that means, for all non-big-fat-american-capitalist-pig of us, an Evil thing !!!
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
I find it odd that /.ers push opensource and freedom of information but don't want to regester an account at NYT to read news.
news.google.com is nearly perfect. It just needs a filter for all of the subscription only papers.
All my coworkers in the office are remiss of the fact that the Washington Post is requiring an enama to see their online content.
While I understand the online business model and the Internet's draw, I can't seem to reconcile with changes to sites that require reg or other hoops now. We'll see the outcome, but a bunch of people are like me, too used to the free model to change.
Oh I thought that being a Slashdot regular would teach you the folly of never?
Anyway the argument for digital delivery of the newspaper is similiar to the argument for digital delivery of music and movies.
Ads and coupons, can be placed in a PDF, and in fact can be enhanced because it is a PDF.
As for the price differential, I think by now you would have learned that price most of the time is on a "what we think market will bear" with a little "were use to" inertia thrown in.
Digital delivery is a win situation for newspapers with a declining paper readership.
With most newspapers being digital from source to just before the press this is easy. No large building consuming acerage and resources. A readership geographically larger, and more diverse.
The only flies in the ointment is the same one's that E-books have. Reading hardcopy vs off screen. Inertia from consumers (and publishers)
The bandwith of a 25MB PDF for mobile users.
The advantages of archiving without the bulk, as well as the ease of searching.
There's also another penalty of bulk. read only a small part of a 5lb paper, and...well you have a 5lb paper to get rid of. read only a small part of a 25MB PDF, and...well you have a delete key, and the penalty is much smaller (time to download).
"Still, just as there's a movement to give net access to low-bandwidth users in developing countries, perhaps there should be a similar push for content availability that is stratified by country."
:/
It's called CSS. I hear people love it.
" I guess I'll be depending on the "pirates" to copy some info to a free site somewhere."
And the consequences of taking something that's not yours? Oh wait! I forgot were I was, nevermind.
BTW, where did I say I demanded free information? I said I'd pay to read random articles on various sites, but I don't want to deal with keeping track of dozens of accounts. In fact, there is no free information in my proposed transaction. I'd be paying them cold hard cash; they in turn would have no reason to expect free information from me.
"Must be value for money"
Doesn't own a credit card.
"must not include advertising"
Throws away inserts that come with his statement.
"must not ever infringe on my privacy"
Still doesn't own a card.
"Must be value for money (seriously, it's worth saying several times)"
Thinking about dropping card and going strictly cash.
"Free-as-in-beer is like the hooker who doesn't remember your name the next weekend."
Free beer will do that.
Why should we pay many times for what was written only once? I certainly understand that content sites may face financial problems, but the benefits of free access to everyone outweight these losses. If they switch towards memberships, the net effect for the society will be negative.
We don't need memberships, we don't need micropayments, we need a method to provide money to the sites irrespective of the size of their current audience.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I subscribe to the print edition of the Los Angeles Times. My last bill was for twenty dollars, and $15.95 of that was for "transportation costs", which aren't an issue for on-line services. Is my other $4.05 keeping the paper afloat? No, they get all their profits from ad revenues.
The only on-line media that will need to charge subscription fees are those with content tailored to niche markets. Those with a mass appeal, like newspapers, I think will be able to support themselves off the ad model, which is only going to become more profitable as more and more people get on-line.
Of course, if you choose to provide subscriber content, you have to tell subscribers from non-subscibers. When you're a publicly traded company, this means that your authentication scheme affects your bottom line and those of your shareholders.
If your authentication is weak, and people get content for free, your shareholders might sue you. You might see all that subscriber money go to the courts and whatnot. Heck, it could even cost more than you get from subscribers.
Salon's Premium Content is a prime example. A crack for their authentication was published in 2600 with a fix provided in the article (issue 20:1) and to date they've not fixed the hole. That was a year ago. People may pay for Salon out of conscience, but less appreciated news outlets have a big target painted on them as far as getting around subscription auth.
As more sites move towards subscription content as part of their bottom line, we will see more companies with a lot to lose from a combination of poor web application design/implementation and minority shareholder lawsuits. Sites that are contemplating this move must understand that this revenue stream comes with costs and risks. If they're not careful, it could cost more than they get out of it.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
The article equates paid content with registration; they have nothing to do with each other. I work for a large-market U.S. daily newspaper with a mixed (portions of site require free; other places it is a voluntary questionaire) registration system, which has nothing - I repeat - nothing to do with paid content - it is about bringing in new channels of targeted advertising revenue to help sustain existing revenue growth in an already successful advertising model used by most daily newspapers.
Most online newspapers will move to a on-time registration model; unlike the New York Times, which requires a pretty heavy-weight registration (user/pw), I think many local-media outlets will opt for anonymous cookie-based registration system that simply asks a few quick questions, stores the answers client-side as cookies, and targets appropriate ads and offers to users - and in some cases, might ask for optional email address if you have interest in email newsletters.
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
There is a reason we have the moderation system on Slashdot.
The moderation system works to an extent, but the system is massively manipulated/abused (your choice) by the Slashdot editorial board. Furthermore, the Slashdot editors/founders deprive users in good standing of their moderation abilities without notifying them and without measured consideration of their reasons for doing so.
The paid employees of Slashdot do not behave ethically enough for me to put my financial support behind them. If accounts are subject to random and unreported restrictions, then using the site with a free account seems like a reasonable tradeoff.
I frequently pay for digital resources I use frequently (e. g. I pay for shareware) and had been considering paying for a subscription to Slashdot, but once I became aware of the unethical behavior of some of the Slashdot employees (regarding the deprivileging of user accounts), I thought it wiser to save my money.
blog
Why should I pay any attention to moderation? I know nothing about who is doing it, or why. As far as I'm concerned, moderation is just a way for a bunch of strangers to vote on posts that confirm their own biases. Why would I care about that?
If Slashdot actually had an editorial policy, published that policy, and allowed moderation only by designated (and bio'd) individuals who had to attach their names to each moderated post, according to specific and published criteria, moderation might be something useful.
Until then, moderation is just another gimmick best left ignored.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
With unsolicited email illegal here in the UK unless a previous by opt-in registrations are becoming a valuable resource.
Having a trail to where email addresses come from could save you from prosecution.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Certainly shoddy work deserves to be criticized.
Call it what you want. Anything that prevents information lockdown is ok with me.
What?