I subscribe to the online editions of The Washington Post and The New York Times. I willingly pay about $10 a month so I can read more than 10 articles and opinion pieces a month. Between these fees and subscribing to NetFlix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu I am paying about $50 each month for online and streaming Internet content.
The ads on Daily Kos don’t bother me at all. After all, it is free.
It appears that just today the Times decided to inundate their stories with as many as three or four large ads between text blocks that force readers to scroll down to continue to read their articles. At least today was the first time I noticed this.
The ads in the Times allow you to change ads and thus you send them even more information so they can better target you for advertising you are particularly interested in.
The online alternative has always been placing an ad on the top, and other ads in a less obtrusive location generally on the right side of the page. As more and more newspapers depend on their online versions to generate the revenue necessary to survive and provide worthwhile reporting they have moved to the for-a-fee model.
A few excellent large news organizations, notably The Guardian, are asking for donations instead of requiring a paid subscription.
Online only media like Daily Beast, Politico (left), Salon, Buzzfeed, Axios, and others have paid staff which regularly break news with their investigative reporting and do not charge for subscriptions or have ads all over their pages. Presumably, they have much smaller staff than large newspapers like the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal which all charge for subscriptions. I don’t know how they generate revenue.
Even local newspapers are charging for online subscriptions. I found that out the other day when I tried to read weekly columns I published several years ago in The Brockton Enterprise and The Patriot Ledger in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Many websites have one ad on the top of each story. The Times maintains this convention.
The Washington Post has a far less commercialized opening page with just one ad on the up left side.
This is the opening page of The New York Times:
The Washing Posts also dots their stories with ads both on the side and between text blocks.
Before the Internet newspapers and magazines utilized the tried and true business model of a combination of subscriptions, newsstand sales, and advertising. If you picked up a magazine in your doctor’s office you still were exposed to advertising. The Internet has changed all that.
What with Net Neutrality an issue we may soon be faced with paying for high-speed Internet access.
I hate to be a curmudgeon but it seems to me that there has to be a better way to keep the public informed without breaking our bank.
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