The Day The Newspapers Shut Down Their Sites

The point would be that a lot of online readers aren't in the market and can't buy a paper if they wanted to. That's why they're reading online.

So if they're getting two sentences of a story and instructions to pick up the paper, it's fairly worthless to them.

 

But who cares about them?

 

Sucks to be them. Not running a charity here.

Let them buy a mail subscription.

 

My guess is out of market readers hit the paper websites more than people who can actually get the paper.

 

Yes, that's realistic. A mail subscription. Better put on extra personnel to handle the avalanche of orders.

I'm not talking about "running a charity," but the "buy the paper" model doesn't work when you live 3,000 miles from the nearest outlet that sells the paper.

And I maintain that for a lot of papers, the majority of the online audience is not in the market.

 

College towns in particular.

Oh, well. Sucks for them.

 

An unacceptable attitude from any business which wants to be succesful. Unless it has a monopoly.

 

It's not people's birth right to read an out-of-town newspaper for free.

 

You're right. 'Sucks for them' isn't a way to run a business.

But if I can be blocked from using hulu because I don't have a U.S. IP address, why not charge for story access to anyone attempting to access from outside the region's ISPs?

 

Let me clarify - "Sucks for them" if they aren't willing to pay.

 

Hopefully you wouldn't say this out loud to your customers. Doesn't work too much.

 

Again, no one has a birth right to free news from their hometown paper. I didn't have it in college. I survived. If I wanted it bad enough, I'd have bought a mail subscription. If they want it bad enough, they can buy a subscription, either online or via mail. Why is this so outlandish? My tire went flat the other day. I didn't expect Tire Barn to give me a free tire.