The Tacoma News Tribune looked having any relevance at all in the future in the face, and decided fuck that noise.
When your subscription does renew, print subscribers will receive digital access on all platforms for an additional $2.50 a month (just over eight cents a day). Nonsubscribers who want to subscribe to The News Tribune only on a digital platform will pay $9.95 a month (about 33 cents a day).
Our digital offerings include our website (thenewstribune.com), our mobile apps available for both the iPhone and Android phones, and our digital replica edition of the printed News Tribune (available on the desktop, laptops and tablets). Digital subscribers will also get access to our archives and to databases not otherwise available to print subscribers. And we are working on other products that will become available to subscribers with digital access in coming months.
Now they’re going to go with the New York Times model and offer limited amounts of free views before it’s shut down.
Nonsubscribers will be able to access only a limited amount of digital content after Dec. 16. Access to the home page, the obituaries and classified advertising will not be restricted, but most other content will be limited to 15 page views a month.
Of course, The New York Times can get away with that because there is a group of people who will pay for access to The New York Times. I don’t know other than some government employees who would pay for The Tribune online.
So if I make less fun of their odd pre-defensiveness, or Lee only makes fun of 15 fucked up drug war editorials a month now you know why.
And look, I’d very much like the Tribune to survive. Their coverage of the Tacoma Teacher’s strike was great (the editorials about it, not so much). And they cover an important piece of the state that I don’t know how it’ll get replaced if they go away. So even with this I’m still pulling for them. But I think it’s a mistake.
Dunno how the Tribube’s paywall will be implemented, but if you’ve hit the limit at the NYT, just clear your cookies and your limit will be reset. Not the most robust system in the world.
@1
I didn’t know that. If that’s true, that’s pretty sad.
@1,2
When my ten articles a month are up on The Times, I still go there, find what I want to read, and then search for it on Google News, generally you go straight through.
The News Tribune has some great people working for it, but the folks in management and the editorial page are mean spirited idiots. A few years back McClatchy offered buyouts to most of the upper management, all the good folks took the offer.
Look at the bright side, Carl, if you and Lee can’t get free access to their fucked-up editorials then neither can the rest of us freeloaders, so it won’t matter how idiotic they are because nobody will read it.
“…neither can the rest of us freeloaders…”
Lee and Carl are freeloaders, too? Who knew!
This discussion still misses the point that someone has to pay for those photographers, reporters and researchers. Aggregators get a lot of hits, but produce little or no content. For that content we have to get used to paying. That said, I would think five bucks a month would be enough to do away with the dead tree version of the paper.
@4 Sounds like deja Peter Horvitz all over again.