Dispatch.com Now Limiting Free Access to Some Online Articles

[groundrules]

ricospaz said:
I hope the Dispatch fails and we become the largest city with no daily newspaper.

I hope this is tongue-in-cheek.

[bucki12]

Walker said:
Nowhere else on the internet for sports coverage outside of The Dispatch?

Good for local big leagues (Buckeye football & bball, Crew, Blue Jackets), but smaller stuff – not so much.

[bucki12]

I am not sure how others do it. But I generally look at CNN online or read/listen to NPR and read the Dispatch (for local news) and then come here to see what people are talking about.

CU is a great place to talk about certain favorite topics, but a lot of news gets filtered out or just never makes it here.

[cheap]

when the Dispatch folds,and it will,city council should just buy the Dispatch with speculated tax income from the casino

without voter approval,of course.

[Mercurius]

OSU Sports: http://www.elevenwarriors.com/
OSU Recruiting: http://247sports.com/
All other: espn.com, http://sports.yahoo.com/

I do regularly read The Daily Briefing political blog–but I also have a subscription to Gongwer.
http://www.gongwer-oh.com/

Bizjournals seems to cover business and development news better (but again, not free) http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/

The Dispatch is in a precarious place I feel–because if you want content and are willing to pay, for almost every category, someone else does it better. Does this leave The Dispatch with the part of the market that just wants all of it’s news in one place? Meh, good luck to them–but I doubt they will be getting a subscription from me.

[bob.os]

Interesting. Marrison mentioned this at the new format roll-out event, but didn’t say it would come so soon.

They seem to be getting ready to spend millions promoting their paper redesign, including a TV ad buy during the Olympic opening ceremony, but will drop a paywall unannounced.

$15/mo for their site is way too rich for me.

[Walker Evans]

bucki12 said:
CU is a great place to talk about certain favorite topics, but a lot of news gets filtered out or just never makes it here.

Anyone’s free to start a topic, share a link or post their own news here.

[bucki12]

Walker said:
Anyone’s free to start a topic, share a link or post their own news here.

Definitely, but I think a lot of the more banal stuff is worth knowing, but not really deserving of a thread and if it gets one it gets buried quickly by a pile of other posts.

I think that is just the nature of discussion blogs. CU is definitely great at what it does.

[NerosNeptune]

It’s weird that the digital only edition is more expensive than getting print plus the digital edition.

NYT gives you 20 free articles a month, plus if you click to an article from someone’s blog post you can read it for free. People who subscribe to the paper edition get web access for free. Not to mention it’s incredibly easy for anyone to get around the paywall. I think they did that on purpose to dampen the bad feelings. If you really want NYT free you can still get it with a slight inconvenience. Unfortunately it looks like the dispatch won’t be as easy from what I can tell.

NYT can probably get away with it because they are one of the most respected newspapers. People from all over the country and world read it. Nobody cares about the Columbus Dispatch outside of Columbus.. I think this is a very bad move on their part.

[ricospaz]

Yep, I want to read local news. and I miss holding an actual paper every once in a while. Don’t worry, I’ll recycle it or reuse it.

[bob.os]

NerosNeptune said:
It’s weird that the digital only edition is more expensive than getting print plus the digital edition.

Not at all. This tells you that they are still a paper newspaper business with the web site being just one of the side businesses.

[misskitty]

If anyone wanted to read more than 10 articles from the Dickspatch there are always ways around it just saying. It is not as if you are stealing from the community right? You are just saving some coins from bailing them out. lol

The NYT went from 20 articles to 10 a few months ago.

[bucki12]

@nerosneptune

My guess is ad revenue on the printed edition makes more money, so physical paper subscribers are prefered for cirulation purposes.

[NerosNeptune]

misskitty said:
If anyone wanted to read more than 10 articles from the Dickspatch there are always ways around it just saying. It is not as if you are stealing from the community right? You are just saving some coins from bailing them out. lol

The NYT went from 20 articles to 10 a few months ago.

Oh,, never noticed. Usually within the first few days of the month I have to start clicking on NYClean to read anyway.

It looks like the dispatch is using a different method that won’t be so easy to remove.. and I kind of doubt the dispatch has a large enough motivated enough readership to have someone who’s capable and wants to take the time to figure it out.

[joev]

They built their own paywall rather than buying something off the shelf. I can’t imagine this will be more financially productive for them than something like improving their online advertising offerings… They’re giving up a lot of eyeballs of the demographic advertisers are most interesting in.

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