The Rise Of Reg-Only Media

cswiii writes "Following up his article a few weeks ago about the NY Times' loss of prominence across the online medium (previously discussed on /.), Adam Penenberg returns with a much wider assault on the lurch towards reg-only content by Big Media as a whole. I just wonder what Margaret Thatcher would think about purportedly living in Beverly Hills..."

Comments

Registration only Radio Shack

[192939495969798999]

Remember how Radio Shack used to always ask for your name/address/etc. whenever you bought anything? I could buy a germanium diode for $1 and get asked the same thing as if I bought a $1000 computer. Registration for news content is like making people key in their address to buy a newspaper from a vending machine. It's just completely ridiculous and unnecessary.
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new t-shirts

I disagree....

[Seraphim_72]

Right now in Minneapolis you can get 13 weeks of the StarTribune for $1.00 a week. $13 for ~3 months of the weekly paper. To buy it from the paper box or the store will run you 50 cents a copy. Now even at the higher rate I don't see 50 cents as actually paying for the content. I would hazard a guess that the .50 is for paper, printing, delivery and a small cut to the seller. The content, I would surmize, is paid by ads. There are ads on the paper site regardless of whether you reg or not. What they want is to sell higher priced targeted ads. What I think we are saying is "Hey, I will look at your background noise, but could we do this a little less personally - after all you can't do this in print, and it is the same information - why is it that online you get more out of me?"

Sera

Inaccuracy Factored In

[tabdelgawad]

Even if only 25% of registrations are relatively accurate, that's still 25% better targeting of ads than purely random. The papers know this, the advertisers know this, and the pricing of ads reflects this.

Can I have my 5 minutes reading this article back?

Re:So what?

[mccrew]

This issue here is that people are giving them information, but its faked information. So if its invalid information, how good is it? Why even have registration anymore if there is nothing for publishers to gain from it?

Your points are valid. Certainly the quality of infomation that they collect is likely not very good, and as more folks become savvy, the quality will diminish further.

But that really isn't the issue. The publishers own the content, and can put up whatever barriers around that content that they want. As you have pointed out, the barriers don't necessarily have to make sense. And even when it doesn't make sense, it remains the sole prerogative of the publisher to conclude that their barriers don't make sense, or are alienating customers, or whatever, and make changes.

Hopefully the availability of less-intrusive alternatives, such as seeing the same content on Yahoo News, will bring sufficient competition to make accessing content less annoying and invasive.

For the nytimes yes, for others no

[asv108]

The nytimes is a great resource that provides excellent content free of charge. I registered once probably eight years ago and it hasn't been an annoyance since then. I am accessing their content free of charge, what is wrong with registration. Especially considering they don't even force you to verify the information?

Now for other sites, I would probably avoid depending on the amount and quality of content. I would certainly not waste the time to register for my local paper's website or something of similar value to me. If you don't think getting access to the nytimes for free is not worth the "hassle" of registering, boycott the nytimes. Otherwise, don't complain.