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The Rise Of Reg-Only Media

Posted by timothy on from the it's-easy-and-it's-the-law dept.

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..."

12 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. A junk email address by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is a very small price to pay for free content. Besides, with portals like Google news, if there is a story you are interested in, there is a good chance that several other media outlets have written a similar article.

    1. Re:A junk email address by Haxwell · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm sure it will be posted elsewhere, but Mailinator.com and Bugmenot.com are the two tools I use to get around that issue.

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      http://www.haxwell.org
  2. Cue theme... by los+furtive · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just wonder what Margaret Thatcher would think about purportedly living in Beverly Hills...

    So I'm not the only non-beverly hills type who enters 90210 as a zip code? Heck I don't even live in the USA.

    --

    I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.

  3. Registration only Radio Shack by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

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    stuff |
  4. It needs to change by tepp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It needs to change, and soon.

    I'm tired of registering at every news site I visit. With the populatiry of sites like Fark and Slashdot, I no longer go to only one news site - I visit articles in newspapers in Arizona, Australia, Germany, Maine, in addition to my usual 3 - The Washington Post, the Seattle P-I, and the BBC World News.

    I don't mind registering for my usual 3. I do mind registering when I want to read a single article in the Boston Piccayune. This makes me give up, and go somewhere else.

    An accepatable compromise is to make registration necessary after reading 5 or so articles, instead of for all articles at that site. After all, do their local advertisers really care about someone who is miles away?

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    Tepp
  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. An alternative to registering... by Maestro4k · · Score: 5, Informative
    There's a site that addresses this problem, it's called Bug Me Not. Just go to it, type in the URL of the site wanting a registration and it'll pull up a generic one that's been submitted. Use that to log in and you can read the article, no personal info given up. It's a community site so if a login stops working another one will be created and added.

    Using Bug Me Not will likely help a lot. When the sites realize that they can't control logins and they have dozends, hundreds or even thousands logged in with the SAME info, they'll know it's not helping them in any way. What'll happen next remains to be seen, but I doubt they'll pull content, it's too ingrained into people's expectations anymore.

  7. I disagree.... by Seraphim_72 · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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

    --
    Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
  8. Inaccuracy Factored In by tabdelgawad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
  9. Re:So what? by mccrew · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
  10. Pushback from Google News by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Google News puts "subscription" after those links that require a login, and usually offers non-subscription alternatives. So there's some pressure from that direction to avoid registration.

    One effect may be to encourage more readership of Government-funded news sites. That's fine, as long as they're not all from the same government. Google News frequently has links to Xinhua, the BBC, the Voice of America, and Al-Jazeera. None require registration.

    It's worth reading all four of those. If all four have roughly the same take on some event, the info is probably correct. If they don't, news manipulation may be going on.

    (It's also amusing to read the Jerusalem Post, which is Israel's equivalent of Fox News.)

  11. For the nytimes yes, for others no by asv108 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.