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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2011 9:42:54 GMT -5
I get the New York Times by email. Today they announced that they are charging a fee to those who do not buy the paper. This includes thse people who use a samrtphone or tablet. After reading 15 articals a month a person has to subscribe for the internet use. I think it is $15.00/month. I guess the days of free internet are slowly coming to an end!
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Post by Swimmy on Mar 18, 2011 12:46:33 GMT -5
The days of free Internet are NOT over. The days of print media producing their print material online for free were numbered from the beginning. With ever decreasing print subscriptions, to avoid going out of business, this was an inevitable evolution. As the digital media continues to gain speed, soon advertisers will be paying through the nose too, possibly reducing the monthly subscriptions.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Mar 18, 2011 12:59:22 GMT -5
Yeah, I got my email notice from them. I usually read a couple articles per day & would hit my limit in just over a week. After that I'll see how anoying it will get. Maybe I'll have to run a cookie cleaner more often.
Of course I use 3 different computers to check my emails & read news. That may affect it.
I wonder how this will affect news aggregators (Drudge, Huffington, MSN, Yahoo ect.) They send a lot of traffic to major news sites.
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Post by dgriffin on Mar 18, 2011 14:18:02 GMT -5
Of course you may know the old trick: since the opening lines of the story are usually presented free, you can google a half of a sentence or so verbatim from the lead and you'll often find it free somewhere.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2011 15:40:01 GMT -5
it is still free on social media site's like facebook.
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Post by Clipper on Mar 18, 2011 15:54:09 GMT -5
And UTICA DAILY NEWS, just click on the banner at the bottom of our page.
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Post by chris on Mar 18, 2011 16:50:21 GMT -5
I heard this on the news this morning and first thing I thought of was the thread you guys started about Utica OD. I'm sure all those portals to get in will be blocked somehow.
This is not going to sit well with my brother as he reads the NY Times on line.......hey maybe he'll finally cough up for a new TV. It's not that he can't afford to get a new tv...in somethings he is very strange when it comes to $. (or maybe spend the time at the library to read their edition).
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Post by JGRobinson on Mar 19, 2011 5:41:28 GMT -5
They have financial and political reasons for charging. They are a business but this is not a wise idea. I see many from UticaOD.Com here for the same reasons as the NYT will see their online pages diminish.
Paid forums are cliques and they eliminate random and specific categories of commentators that are necessary for a truly informative melting pot of ideas. My biggest issue is that it leaves the most important voices and ears out of the mix, children and young adults that can't or wont pay a dime for this when they can get it for free elsewhere.
We will end up talking to ourselves if we continue to charge for a seat at the table of discussion and discourse.
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Post by longtimer on Mar 19, 2011 7:29:56 GMT -5
In addition to charging for online content the newspaper business model is going to be going through a lot of change. Many papers are not printed in their community and that number is only growing. the OD prints the Little Falls paper and the Oneida Dispatch just announced a deal with the Syracuse Post Standard. The Post will be printing Oneida Daily Dispatch, Rome Observer, Oneida-Madison Pennysaver and Southern Madison County Living all of which had been printed in Oneida. Eliminating printing presses and staff can save a paper a lot of money while increasing the usage of the remaining ones.
With all of that said there are some potential problems with that and that is that information like local news and issues, the ones we can actually influence, become harder and harder to find in smaller communities as news from the larger ones replaces the local stories.
I think the impact can be seen in on air media. We now have access to YNN and although I have no particular issues with YNN it obviously is heavily slanted towards Syracuse. The recent changes at radio station WRUN are another example. We get Central New York News again with a heavy Syracuse emphasis I do have some issues with them because there is a lot of dead air time there but that is another issue.
When I then look at the recent fight between between WKTV I was struck that very few people considered the conflict of interest that existed. YNN is owned by Time Warner and driving WKTV out of business is a very good business model for them. It will free up a cable channel so they can charge us for programming most of us don't want and it will increase their ad revenue on YNN which is great for them but not a good deal for the local consumer. I am convinced WKTV's days, and those of most local stations in markets like ours are numbered. I suspect the same thing will be happening in the print media. The biggest problem is that over time we will have very few choices and that may have serious ramifications. News is rarely news today, it is heavily biased and quite often facts that don't happen to support that outlets slant on things are under reported.
If we objectively look at the Utica OD we have to admit that there are many legitimate business issues and a declining population is certainly one of them. They are however hastening their own demise. As many of us have complained they do very little actual reporting. They basically print news releases and do almost no followup. I can't think of a better example that the Gro-West debacle. I can't recall one article where they actually dug for any information and facts, they simly printed he said she said stuff. Leaving all politics out of it, the public wanted facts but the OD gave us what was easy for them to give us, they gave us what fit their need not ours. I for one am not paying for that from the OD, the N.Y. Times or any other paper.
The good news is the Internet. In addition to sites like this one where people can share ideas it also reduces many of the barriers to entry into the news business. It would be virtually cost prohibitive for just about everyone to start a new traditional news outlet but a site like Utica Daily News can be started with much less up front money and few worries about distribution etc.
Sites like they Utica Daily News will evolve and if they do one critical thing they will prosper. They have to be wise and listen to the readers, They have to give them what they want, not what they want to give them. This is their chance to really change things, their chance to really grab some market share. I hope they grab that chance and don't get frozen like a deer in the headlights.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2011 8:11:51 GMT -5
Longtime I would have said the same. I also have the Washington Post by email. I am waiting to hear if they also will be charging.
Now if my other newspapers do the same: The Guardian, The Telegraph, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Canadian Newspapers, then I won't know what to do
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Post by dgriffin on Mar 19, 2011 19:17:14 GMT -5
We're becoming a single source world regarding the media. News, films, radio and TV. Ditto the music business. It's all about money and what can be delivered for the cheapest cost. It's a good business model except that bankers wind up choosing the content. It would not have worked with Americans a half century ago. It may work today and more in the future as our children are brought up to make the modern media their heartbeat. Yes, thank God for the Internet. Many young people I know are forsaking TV for it. The web's inaccuracy is made up for by its surprises. Until the government gets a hold of it.
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Post by stoney on Mar 20, 2011 13:07:51 GMT -5
What does anyone expect in a Capitalistic country?
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Post by dgriffin on Mar 20, 2011 19:50:35 GMT -5
Very True, Stoney. The media in Libya must be much better. It sure ain't in Canada, and that's somewhat of a democracy.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Mar 20, 2011 22:48:56 GMT -5
As the saying used to go "There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda." Translation available upon request. Translation fee donated to the Clipperfest Refreshment Fund.
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Post by chris on Mar 26, 2011 16:10:35 GMT -5
Wow CB do you read Russian too...I'm impressed.
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