Starting January 4th, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s online edition, jsonline.com, will begin charging for $2.35/week for access.
With its digital offering, called “JS Everywhere,” the Journal Sentinel will offer access to JSOnline.com, the Journal Sentinel e-edition, its mobile site for smartphones, plus coming iPad and other digital applications for a subscriber’s fee. Readers who subscribe to the print edition of the newspaper will receive free access to all digital products. Web content previously available on the pay site Packer Insider will be included as part of JS Everywhere subscriptions.
Under the JS Everywhere plan, online readers will be able to read as many as 20 articles per month at no charge, but after reaching that threshold, will be prompted to become a print or digital subscriber.
So the MJS believes that they offer the same value as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times? What have they been smoking and where can I get some?
They’ve GOT to charge something. It’s not a question of delivering the “same value” as NYT, etc. — for some people, NYT is worthless. The paper you read is the paper that has value to you. This isn’t about which paper is better in the grand scheme of ranking newspapers by quality of writing, calibre of staff, and what-not. It’s that newspapers can’t survive without charging for online content. Frankly I’m surprised it’s taken JS this long to do it.
If you want local news, you have to pay for it, pure and simple. I don’t always agree with their news judgment or their editorial page, but these things aren’t free. Reporters and editors have to make a living, just like all the rest of us.
You may not like certain stalwarts at Journal Communications (nor do I), but it’s not helpful to make nasty comments about the only broad-based, large, daily newspaper in town.
Folks who think The New York Times is worthless are likely to be the same people who get their news from WorldNutDaily or Townhall.com so I’m not terribly worried about them. But is the MJS worth $100/year? I don’t know if people will regard it as a good value. But I do know that there will be fewer people reading the paper and seeing their online ads.
If it doesn’t charge for online access, how else does the J-S survive?
And a bonus: I bet all those bizarre commenters will be too cheap to pay the fee, and we can take that toxic waste site off the list.
Well that would be a bonus! I might just pay for it.
MJS can survive the way other news outlets do.
They produce quality news service that advertisers want to purchase ad space within the electronic/digital rag.
Precisely. They could start by at least giving some effort to being somewhat impartial, or at the very least not quite so biased to the right.
Are you serious? Right wing? It has commentators like Bice and Kane rolling out front page left wing dribble daily attacking anything conservative. There is story after story about anything negative concerning conservatives but NEVER anything negative printed about all the liberal idiotic stuff that goes on and you sit here and say it is a right wing paper? You are smoking it pal! Oh yeah…they endorsed Walker….. that’s why they are right wing….. ( Yes, they did. About two days before the election when everyone and their grandma knew that Barrett didn’t stand a chance)
The New York Times spewed nothing but government approved propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war and their coverage of Latin America reads like the copy was pre-approved by the State Department, so yes, it’s pretty worthless. Some of the op-eds are informative and of course the fashion section is great. And no, I don’t read World Nut Daily.
The Times was not alone in the rah-rah run-up to the Iraq war, but I agree, they should have known better. I’m not sure what specifically you’re referring to on the Latin American question.
Word is that most of the Gannett papers will be do the same thing.
LMAO – good luck with that, JS. Don’t be counting on me!
Agreed. I won’t pay to read anything that right-wing rag publishes.
What cracks me up is that the right believe the JS is left wing, the left think it’s right wing.
They have 170 years of monetizable text they are ignoring. A decent scan of past issues (not the pdf thingies Google offers now but true text scans), a good contextually aware ad program and an some decent SEO would take care of it. Today you don’t pay your staff with the one 10 grand ad buy, but the million nickle clicks from Sweden and China and Paraguay. Google “long tail.”
As an aside, it’s always amazed me that we PAY for a product that delivers ads, and then we pay higher prices for products because of the built-in ad costs. It’s like selling cigarettes at Walgreens; they get you coming and going.
the journal isn’t worth the paper they print on, what makes them think their online service is any better?
It’s the Same old S*** day after day. I say, “F*** ’em!