If you really want to understand what’s going on, read this book, and weep:

http://tinyurl.com/dtveq

I understand you well (@7). Like i said, i feel lucky to be old enough to have been raised in those good old days. My family subscribed to the Detroit Free Press because they’re liberal, but the Detroit News wasn’t a bad paper. And a real news junkie could get a paper in the morning and afternoon.

I live too far away to make a subscription to the Freep worth it (delivery would be at like 11am) and outside the realistic circulation of any major daily…though sometimes i think about getting the Sunday NYT and treating it as a weekly. But honestly, i wouldn’t pay for the Free Press anymore. Every once in a while i forget The Economist (my lunch reading for the week) and pick up a Freep. It only makes me angry that i can read the whole front section in less than a half an hour while eating. (Sometimes i can get through the Sports section in that time too.)

They never respond to my letters asking what happened, even though i know the answer and you reiterated it.

I hate to not pay for it, because i know that only pushes the trade closer to extinction, but i also hate to give Gannett money for such an inferior product. I don’t know if i should hold on and refuse to go gently into that good night or give up and recognize that i’m either a throwback or the tail end of a dying breed. Until then, i’ll dream right along with you.

Good journalism is expensive. Britney Spears Lite ™ isn’t good or expensive journalism. At some point, both the audiences of news and owners of news providers are going to have to come to grips with how to pay for information people need rather than simply provide what’s cheap ‘n’ easy.

If everything’s in the ad revenue, and that depends on high readership, why chance limiting the traffic to your site?

I should add I like the debate on paid-versus-unpaid newspapers, and by extension, newspaper web sites, because I see both sides of the argument, and both have strong points. I tend to lean towards free in the online environment because so much “pay-per-view” web content (if it’s highly sought after) ends up spreading for free anyway.

Well, I don’t want to speak for Jason, but in my opinion it’s because you’re creating an added step, giving someone that extra moment to think, “Do I really want to put my email address out there for more unsolicited spam in exchange for reading a story about Brittney Spears’ kids?”
Papers wanting to encourage readers into their on-line producs need to make things as easy, convenient and non-intrusive as possible, or risk losing audience.
Besides, why is it necessary? Visitor numbers can be obtained without a login, and it’s the traffic advertisers are interested in.

I do like your utopia theory earlier in the thread!