[ Saturday ]
Online Newspapers Missing the Message
Click on a link to a story from a news aggregator site such as Google or Yahoo, and you may find yourself at a 'subscription' site requesting you to sign up for a 'free subscription' in order to read the text of the article. Sounds harmless enough, right? Afterall, they are only asking for your e-mail address, age, location, date of birth, political party, gender, favorite soft drink, etc. Now multiply that one experience by the number of online publications in the Internet universe...
Wake up, media outlets ! Have you figured out how many potential viewers you have turned away? There are far too many choices online for most sophisticated users to tolerate these intrusive requests. Read the headlines at the 'New York Times' site, but in order to read the full article, one must have a 'subscription'. Same at the Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Sydney Morning Herald, Salon magazine, etc. So, the smart choice is to go somewhere else. An example would be some of the sites listed here:
Search2005 Of particular interest is the site with the 'Worldwide Front Pages'.
When the marketing geniuses at these outlets realize that the potential viewers are getting their news elsewhere, maybe they will alter their misguided requests. By that time, however, they will most likely be employed somewhere else.
MM [07:20]
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