So CoverItLive no longer is free

We brought in tremendous numbers on out-of-town football and basketball playoff games this past school year. Live readers and replays got us well over 1500 more than once. And that's saying something with our vast "I don't have a computer" readership.

 

We've gotten good numbers for high school sports and occasionally for college. We've also used it for breaking news, and a big police trial verdict last year got a a few thousand (I think) in it since we were posting the verdict on each count live. In the right circumstance, it can be a big draw to a paper's website.

 

The way our industry is struggling, is it not odd that we're always looking for something for free? Especially, considering fewer and fewer of us are now giving away our content.

 

That'll be the end of our relationship with CoverItLive. I could understand having ads pop up in the middle of chats, but I'm not going to have someone else's ads pop up and also pay for the service.

 

What's the old saying? Ethics are for those who can afford them?

It'd be nice to be able to pay for all these services that we'd like to offer to our readers/customers. But if someone else makes said services available for free, it's silly not to take advantage of them.

The Internet is loaded with open-source alternatives to just about anything you want to do. Is CIL worth paying for? Perhaps for some, perhaps not for others.

 

I'm not sure any of these will work for us, but Mandy Jenkins (who is really wired into these kinds of things) has a good post on other options:

http://zombiejournalism.com/2012/05/free-alternatives-to-coveritlive/

 

That's gonna hurt a little. During the HS basketball playoffs, we were seeing numbers of 1,000 to 1,300 live chatters during games.

 

Win.

Thanks, lantaur.