Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

SF Chronicle said to demolish paywall after four months
CNET ^ | August 13, 2013 5:17 PM PDT | Steven Musil

Posted on 08/16/2013 9:07:08 AM PDT by Charles H. (The_r0nin)

The newspaper introduced a new subscription-only Web site in March that charged for access to "premium" stories and columns. But its content is reportedly free now.

A little more than four months after the San Francisco Chronicle began charging online readers for some content, the newspaper's paywall experiment has reportedly come to an end.

The newspaper announced in March that it would place certain "premium" stories and columns behind a paywall, charging readers a $12 monthly subscription fee for access to all the digital content on SFChronicle.com, which is separate from the newspaper's free SFGate.com. News of the paywall's impending collapse was broken Tuesday morning on Twitter by The Verge's Casey Newton, a former reporter at CNET and the Chronicle: ...

(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: business; media
Dinosaur Media Deathwatch! Looks like people just aren't willing to pay for internet versions of the dead-tree media. What a shame (sarcasm)!
1 posted on 08/16/2013 9:07:08 AM PDT by Charles H. (The_r0nin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Charles H. (The_r0nin)

no one was paying to read, eh?


2 posted on 08/16/2013 9:08:20 AM PDT by NonValueAdded ("When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate." George F. Will)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NonValueAdded

My particular style
of rhme

Is called
Free Verse

It is called
Free Verse
for three reasons

It has

No meter
No rhyme
And no sales value.


3 posted on 08/16/2013 9:13:58 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Charles H. (The_r0nin)
The problem is most newspapers are nothing more than cut and paste articles supplied from other newspapers through AP. Other than the Wall Street Journal and a few other big papers (including, unfortunately, the NY Times and Washington Post) very little original reporting is done by any single newspaper. Therefore when a paper puts up a paywall, their potential customers can just go to any of a hundred other newspaper sites publishing the same story.

They will either have to form a unified cartel or start producing enough original, useful material like the WSJ to make it worth paying for.

4 posted on 08/16/2013 9:22:04 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (This message has been recorded but not approved by Obama's StasiNet. Read it at your peril.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Charles H. (The_r0nin)

Our local liberal rag is trying the paywall gambit. So far, I believe I have missed perhaps three stories about the openings of new restaurants. The rest of the “news” I can get from the websites of our local tv stations. LOL


5 posted on 08/16/2013 9:28:32 AM PDT by Wiser now (Socialism does not eliminate poverty, it guarantees it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Buckeye McFrog

I have read enough of their slanted socialist democratic political propanganda over the years to know I wouldn’t read them anymore even if they paid me.


6 posted on 08/16/2013 9:29:18 AM PDT by spawn44 ( MOO)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Charles H. (The_r0nin)

Paywall up, paywall down. Paywall up, paywall down. These are just more convulsions of the dying newspaper corpses.

The Internet comet crashed to earth in 1998 and killed the newspaper dinosaurs, who existed solely because they could create monopoly conditions for local advertising. The newspapers were killed by the digital revolution with the formation of craigslist, ebay, google, and amazon all around 1998, but their death has taken over a decade to register with their pea-sized brains as their mammoth bodies thrashed about.

Going digital ten years too late means that newspapers have merely become little more than a few additional websites competing with a billion existing web sites for limited advertising dollars. And even worse for the dying papers, ad pages no long bring in thousands of dollars per page, but instead bring in thousandths of a cent per page, so there’s no chance whatsoever of digital ad revenues ever equaling newspaper publishing ad revenues.

Digital subscriptions, also known as paywalls, never had a chance of working either. Most of what’s behind a paywall is freely available elsewhere, and paywalls render any ads behind the paywalls valueless, meaning no one in their right mind is going to pay for an ad behind a paywall.

It is true that the loss of news gathering by newspapers is collateral damage from the digital revolution. However, news was never anything more than the hook to get consumers to buy and read the newspaper ads, and for the most part had been turned into little more than leftest propaganda anyway, so the value of the “loss” is highly debatable.

At any rate, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch, since most newspapers have been promoting the overthrow of all that is good and unique about the U.S. for at least 70 years. At least buggy whip makers never tried to destroy the U.S.


7 posted on 08/16/2013 10:24:35 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson