Bishop Hurt; Peoria "Journal-Star" Sells Out To The Man
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 7:17 PM CDT
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PrintBen Bishop suffered a lower body injury in Sunday's 4-3 win at Milwaukee, and the Rivermen have called up goaltender Beau Erickson from the ECHL's Ontario (California) Reign... but you won't be able to read that on the Peoria Journal-Star website unless you pay.
Apparently, the PJStar has decided that they aren't making enough money and thus will no longer provide the news for free on their website. You now have to subscribe for $6.99 a month if you wish to read any of their articles on the website. Oh, they will "generously" allow you 15 free page views per month, but needless to say, your GTPD exceeded that limit fairly quickly.
The best part? Even if you subscribe to the print edition, you still have to pay $1.49 a month to read the website. Anyone care to guess to what Stygian depths their page hits will now plummet, and how quickly?
This is going to put a bit of a cramp in the Prospect Sunday reporting for the time being, and is the reason why there was no "River Readings" feature yesterday.
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yeah man
how dare a media company want to make some money to pay its employees. of all the nerve. i mean, those reporters are out there busting their ass and making shit pay (and i know firsthand how shitty it is, i used to work for the same company as the pj star) but they should totally give away their content for free.
sucks to hear about bishop, but your little rant hit a nerve. sorry.
If they're getting ad revenue, as spectr indicates below...
…then they’re hardly “giving their content away for free.” They’re getting paid by the people taking out the ads; there’s no need to gouge people who come to the site looking for news, and damn sure no reason to gouge the people who are already paying a subscription for the print edition.
Any opportunity to insult and talk down to me, though, right?
"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851
http://futurenotes.blogspot.com
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 8:10 PM CDT up reply actions
I left the newspaper business in 2005 and I was damn lucky
There are few if any healthy local newspapers anywhere in this country. The two main reasons: ebay and Craigs List. In the classified section of the newspaper, that one inch you bought for your garage sale, for your help wanted ad, for your used car, it cost four times the open rate of the regular newspaper advertising. In 2001 when the economy wobbled after the terrorist attacks, recruitment advertising (help wanted), went through the floor. About that time ebay took off. And then Craigs List. Easy and cheap ways to sell your crap without having to hassle placing an ad over the phone in the paper.
The bottom line is newspapers never thought classified would go away forever. In editorial we would hear about how they were changing their strategy and it would come back when the economy did. And it didn’t. Combine that with increased newsprint costs (notice how skinny newspapers are now?) and fewer brick and mortar businesses needing to advertise in combination with a generation of people trained to read news online and not in the paper so circulation numbers are down and you’ve got an entire industry in trouble.
One huge thing is overhead. You have staff that don’t generate revenue (pressmen, designers, editors, reporters, photographers, backshop people, carriers, admin) and then the people who do (sales). It’s a few people propping up a lot. The cost to print the paper and distribute it is huge. And no one can tell me that some Google ads is going to make a dent in that. And local online ads still are a novelty/low revenue generators overrall.
Newspapers should have been charging for content for a long, long time. Wall Street Journal does it. If you get all the content of the paper online for $7 a month (name a daily paper you can subscribe to for a month at that price), that’s a bargain if you ask me.
I was a managing editor. Huge part of why I’m not any more.
www.stlouisgametime.com
There are folks I know living comfortably off their Google ads and sponsors
The problem is newspapers don’t have a clue when it comes to the Internetz and how to make money. If the average slub can start a blog network, pay writers, coders and a staff like a paper to keep it running and still make some coin you have to ask why can’t the newspapers?
Raising the newspaper price to $1 also isn’t go to save them, it just drove even more customers and me away from the newstands.
Life is tough, it’s even tougher when you’re (newspapers) stupid.
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
Because of the overhead Brad mentions.
As I said, I get that.
"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851
http://futurenotes.blogspot.com
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 9:27 PM CDT up reply actions
Anyone ever run a website? There is this thing we call overhead too
URL domain cost
Coder/s to design site and install software upgrades. Fix hacked pages and servers
Graphic designer/s
SSL fee
Server/Host
Promotions
Sales inside/outside
Office expenses
Book keeping/Tax Prep
Legal. Copyright/Trademark. Defending and issuing cease and desist letters.
etc etc. This is from our small site.
You don’t just grab an URL off Go Daddy and slap up a site for $20 a month.
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
i worked at a paper with less than 10K circulation
we had more than 20 full-time (with benefits) employees. add that to your list of expenses.
newspapers are not making money. this isnt the case of the PJ star trying to get richer and give out bonuses, its literally trying to save someones job.
My point is not that the papers are getting rich
it’s they’re dinosaurs and cannot adapt. They can’t even tread water when others have figured out how to make 100K+ off just ONE site with ads and sponsors. It’s like all the blinking lights confuse them. Shit, if they’d put down the rotary phone and unplug the fax they might just take a giant leap into some market share. I still hear disparaging comments from print editors and publishers while we kick their sorry azzes.
For example the local outdoor beat writer was explaining to me how he has to submit his fish report a certain way by slow modem so it would interface with the RIverside paper’. I worked on that antique shit in the 80s. Any late breaking news just got 86ed because once he submitted his stuff and the deadline hit they couldn’t reverse that rusty old ship. No one reads his report since it’s old news even after a couple days. Fish bites turn on and off from day to day, the dumb bastards couldn’t figure out how to do an online fish report with updates I guess.
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
There's a big difference
between folks living comfortably and running a large business with 70-100 employees off it.
www.stlouisgametime.com
Gotta disagree
Aggregating content, blog style, is much, much easier and less costly than producing original work. And you can say we produce original work here all you want, but the truth is we mostly don’t. We link, we cite.
If the post-dispatch didn’t pay a beat reporter to follow the team around the courty - think thousands of dollars in airfare- we’d have no idea what was going on with the team except for what we hear on broadcasts — and the bx guys are very much in cahoots with the team. You’d get no real news.
Next in the Nate the Great mystery series: Nate the Great searches for a free-agent forward who doesn't blow dicks.
by NateTheGreat. on Apr 4, 2011 9:56 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
I'm not talking aggregators
I’m talking original content. Anybody can aggregate, they don’t draw the eyeballs like the polished writers and ones with unique voices do.
Big brawl in Kings Sharks game, gotta run
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
just trying to give you some insider perspective
the company thats owns the PJ Star was the parent company of my tiny little paper. things were not good. every quarter we were worried they were going to shut the doors at our paper. its pretty much the reason i got out (among other things).
in smaller towns, a lot of small businesses (the bread and butter of the paper) are afraid of online ads. they don’t know the value/can’t measure it. a big site like espn.com can have nike and other major companies, but a paper in Peoria isnt going to get those ads.
my old newsroom used to have full-time photographers and a four-man sports staff. i was the lone person on the sports staff and the chief photographer. the money is drying up.
the paper sells for 75 cents a day and has, stupidly, been giving away online content for free. its not a smart business plan and most papers, especially ones like the PJ star, will disappear without new revenue streams.
it may be a hassle for you to drop $7 a month to get top-notch reporting but it’s going to be more of a hassle when the paper goes under and no one is around to provide the news outside of team-sponsored one-sided propaganda.
Joe and Brad, I understand what you're both saying...
I’m hardly the idiot that some people seem to think I am.
My concern is that, if I don’t pay the seven bucks a month for access to the PJStar site, then I have drastically slashed the amount of content I can pass on to the readers here on Prospect Sundays and in the occasional updates throughout the week.
Considering that I will use this information for maybe six months out of the year, in reality I’m being charged $14 a month for the privilege of being able to cover the Rivermen for our readers. That may still be a bargain, considering that a subscription to the print edition would probably cost more than that per month… but even if I were subscribing to the print edition, they’d still be charging me a monthly fee to access the features on the website.
Now, it could well be that those of you in charge of "Game Time" don’t really care about the Rivermen, and about updates on the team throughout the season. I tend to believe that’s not the case, because if it were, I would never have been given Prospect Sundays in the first place.
A few years back, I asked if I could get management to pay for a subscription to International Scouting Services, so I could keep up with the draft prospects and provide decent information to the readers on those prospects. That subscription cost a hell of a lot more than seven bucks a month, and I completely understand why the request was denied.
On principle, I don’t think I should ask for Game Time to pay seven bucks a month for access to a newspaper website, either… nor do I think I should have to pay it out of my own pocket when the information is to be disseminated here.
So there’s the dilemma. If I have to go above and beyond to make Prospect Sundays a solid and reliable source of prospect information for our readers, then so be it. But then, do I not deserve compensation every bit as much as the reporters on the PJStar, or any other paper?
"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851
http://futurenotes.blogspot.com
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 8:46 PM CDT up reply actions
A few replies
1. I never called you an idiot. Did not imply you are an idiot.
2. Your original comment was "PJStar has decided that they aren’t making enough money." I doubt the paper is making much if any profit. In your resonse, you then turn your argument into paragraphs about providing content to readers. See below.
3. Understand your $14 a month argument, but I would think you could end the subscription in the offseason. Or not. Whatever. If you think I’m getting paid to do this or the paper, I’m not. In case no one told you, this thing is not a big revenue driver. For anyone. I understand your dilemma. But no one bought my computer, pays for my internet, pays for my cable so I can watch games, buys me tickets to go to games etc. Cost of doing this "hobby." I call it a hobby because it certainly isn’t a business for me. It’s a question of what you can/want/able to do.
4. As far as the issue of you not paying for the information for it to run here, that’s an interesting issue. As you say above, you’re passing along their information, their reporting. It’s a two-way street. They wouldn’t get linked here, they wouldn’t get exposure/traffic from us.
Finally, you’ve told everyone about your personal situation. I could see where you would like to make blogging a paying gig. There are hundreds if not thousands of people with the same thought. Probably dozens have actually made money (note, not good money). It’s a hard, hard thing to do. Good luck. But compensation every bit as much as the reporter? I don’t get that argument.
www.stlouisgametime.com
Also...
it may be a hassle for you to drop $7 a month to get top-notch reporting but it’s going to be more of a hassle when the paper goes under and no one is around to provide the news outside of team-sponsored one-sided propaganda.
Unless I shell out the seven bucks a month, then the “team-sponsored one-sided propaganda” is all the readers are going to get, because that’s all I’ll have access to.
If you guys can live with that, then I guess I can.
"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851
http://futurenotes.blogspot.com
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 8:48 PM CDT up reply actions
I'd rather not live with that.
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.
For the pay to play news sites
If you can’t make money on a fairly busy website with ads you’re need to find another line of work. Shit, Google ads will pay the light bill alone on a site. Hustle up some sponsors and there is no need to charge admission.
The dumb bastards (newspapers) took forever to figure out they needed to be on the wild wild Interwebz and they are going to slide themselves right into bankruptcy by charging membership now. If charging to play wasn’t enough they are painting the whole god dayum page with annoying pop ads and now them fucking tool bars they insert into the bottom of your browser (WTF is that?). There is a way to do ads and not make your customers want to gouge your eyes out with a dull steak knife.
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
Has the paywall been implemented on the Peoria Journal-Star site, yet?
Do you have to set up an account with user name and password to see your free fifteen articles per month? If not, how could they know how many times a particular user has visited their site unless they are setting a cookie on your machine or tracking your IP address? The cookie issue can be solved by disallowing cookies for that site in your browser options. If they are tracking IP addresses, going through a free proxy server should fix that, even if you have to change the proxy that you use every so often. I understand that the NY Times new paywall is easily bypassed by disallowing Javascript with the NoScript addon for Firefox, or even by accessing the Times articles through a google search.
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.
When you go to click on an article in the Rivermen drop-down menu...
…the article comes up on the screen. Then, before you get a chance to read more than the first graf or two, it’s covered by a large box that directs you to the signup feature.
Spec’s website above (bugmenot.com) doesn’t work for this, because that website gives you user names and passwords, and the signup is by e-mail address, not user name.
I can’t see any way to sign up or log on without providing an e-mail address, and without giving Corporate access to my online bank account (which they no doubt already have anyway) so they can suck seven bucks a month out of it.
"If we do not prepare for ourselves the role of the hammer, there will be nothing left but that of the anvil."
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1851
http://futurenotes.blogspot.com
by Tomorrows Blues on Apr 4, 2011 8:27 PM CDT up reply actions
I've been trying...
for an hour to reproduce the pop up sign-in box on that peoria journal site for about an hour or so, and I haven’t been able to do it. I have opened twenty-something Rivermen articles, and no box has come up. I have been able to view full articles with video and comments. I am wondering if that paywall box is run by Javascript, which I have disabled by default. I am thinking that there is hope. Don’t give up, yet.
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.
I'm navigating the PJ Star site with no problems
pulling up all the links and articles with no log in
Just a chew toy for the hockey gods
I can't say as if I blame you.
I could only minor in Journalism at the school I went to. Decided on a business path instead. Either way would’ve been a mistake in this economy.
Fight Club writer for the print edition of St. Louis Game Time . . . I need another beer.
The Throwdown Lowdown Report, only on The Bluenote Zone.
And I can also write things in 140 characters or fewer.
My problem with papers
Newspapers stopped being in depth informational pieces and started being news blurbs. I read a few papers to kill time on break and I get a paragraph and a half then get told to turn to page 7 where theres another 2 paragraphs and thats it. The paper doesnt seem to go in depth with anything and its just making me shift through pages to find stuff I want. Im assuming they did this to make people try and browse through the whole paper repeatedly for advertising reasons but its frustrating more than anything and the stories themselves are nothing more than expanded twitter posts. Newspapers are trying to out internet the internet with their shitty blurb form of reporting. I read magazines, I will pick up a magazine and read articles in them, and I will buy the magazine if I enjoy or want to re-read something. I haven’t been a subscriber to any specific magazine for a while but I like reading the content magazines give because they run multiple page pieces and give in depth information. Newspapers are a blurb and magazines and good internet articles are stories. That to me is why newspapers are dying.
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Jay McClement for Selke in 2011. Justice will be served. Penalties will be killed.
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