San Jose's cat box liner is going down the paywall road

[KamaAina]

because it's worked so well for the NY Times, LA Times, and SF Chronicle, among others.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24550468/bay-area-news-group-announces-new-digital-subscription

John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, had been one of the leading holdouts to the trend toward paywalls but Tuesday said All Access is a tactic that will help the company now. Newspapers' subscription rates are expected to increase somewhat as the new model takes hold.

"We need more gas in the tank if we are going to complete this journey of print-to-digital transformation," he wrote in his blog....

Under the newspaper industry's traditional model, he said, the reader contributed 20 percent of the revenue and advertising 80 percent. Today, that model is about 30 percent reader and 70 percent advertising. The New York Times now gets 56 percent of its revenue from readers and only 44 percent from advertising and other sources, he said.

"So we're moving into this age of reader revenue, and this is part of the model. It doesn't mean that advertising is not important, but it's of lesser importance going forward. And it makes the connection between the journalist and the readers clearer."

Good thing there's seldom any news of national importance down here, apart from tech, which you can always get from Cnet or someplace.

[reddread]

1. Maybe if they had someone like Gary Webb working there?

Since they wont be able to do that, and because of why,
I would be ever so happy to dance on the grave of those lap dogs.
maybe someday.

[KamaAina]

2. Correct-a-mundo.

Since the Gary Webb days, the once-proud Merc has been sold to something called MediaNews Group. "Lap dogs" is an accurate description of today's Merc. When Mayor Reed (D-Sort Of) says Jump, they ask "How high?"

[Scuba]

3. The Milwaukee Urinal/Sentinel makes you buy a subscription for over 15 articles a month ...

... or you can just clear your cookies.

[KamaAina]

5. Sweet!

I hadn't even thought of that.

[duffyduff]

4. The fact is you HAVE to have the traditional media for sources for news

Every other "outlet" like blogs and the like just regurgitate what is out there unless the blog is affiliated in some way with traditional media or the blogger is a professional journalist.

Furthermore, blogs and other internet "media" are notoriously unreliable because of no fact-checking in place. Not to say the traditional media doesn't slip up now and then, but blogs don't even have the ability to fact check sources.

People are mad because they thought they'd get their news "free" forever and rejected buying dead tree versions of papers. Well, the traditional media has to have revenue, so this is what happens with paywalls.

I personally prefer buying traditional newspapers and utilizing traditional media. I just find so much internet "media" to be garbage.

[hunter]

6. I subscribe to my local paper but it's pressed pretty thin. How to fix this, I don't know.

A quasi-government news organization, say like the BBC or Al-Jazeera, would fail under the influence of big money in the U.S.A. just as our private news media has failed. National Public Radio and Television are hardly worth spit any more as independent news sources, they've become Fox News for people who think they are too smart for Fox News.

Papers like the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the decrepit old queen of newspapers the New York Times, and all the other big city newspapers and major television news networks (CBS especially of the moment) are corrupt shadows of their former selves.

All these serious news sources had numerous blind spots in the past, issues they wouldn't cover and issues they sugar-coated, but mostly they maintained some journalistic standards. That's gone. It seems these days they are all faces of the Great Corporate Borg, little better than TASS of the Soviet Union. An informed reader must ignore the chaff and read between the lines. A story about the recent upsurge in natural gas production means only that we will be drinking polluted water long after the natural gas bubble collapses and heating or cooling our homes becomes a great burden again.

Simple things like smart phone tweets, photo sharing sites, and discussion boards like this one have remarkable power. But how long before they fall under authoritarian rule and disruption, either corporate control (U.S.A style) or central government control (Chinese style)???

[brooklynite]

7. What exactly is your objection to a paywall?

Do you think ALL information should be free? If so, do you expect the reporters, writers and editors to work for free to provide it?

[KamaAina]

8. If I had figured out a way to fund news outlets, I'd have my own startup.

Something funded by a percentage of hookup fees, like the fee added to the price of blank cassettes, distributed based on clicks (with some protections in place against bots), maybe.

The office I am in subscribes to the dead-trees version. Does that give me a way to access it from my desk? If not, why not?

[brooklynite]

9. From the Mercury website

print subscribers will be given access not only to their own newspaper's digital content and e-editions, but also for the first time to the news group's other publications

My guess is you need to get the username/password for the account holder at your office.