Washington Post To Erect Summer Paywall

COMMENTS (10)

• UNBELIEVABLE! Like I can get better local news on NBCWashington and better world news on CNN?! Sure the Post is almost a tradition at this point, but traditions are made to be broken when they exceed their usefulness and start charging!

  Comment by Brian G. — Monday March 18, 2013 @ 9:40pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Good luck with that Post.
  You’ll need it.

  Comment by Casey — Monday March 18, 2013 @ 9:53pm PDT  Reply to this post

• “start charging” yes, how outrageous. How dare they try to make a profit to pay for their overhead. In fact, how dare we pay for anything. Songs should be free. Movies should be free. The pair of pants I got from the gap should be free too. Outrageous. Seriously, I hope your boss doesn’t decide to get someone to do your job for free.

  Comment by Jake — Monday March 18, 2013 @ 10:11pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Hey Jake. It’s called an outdated business model. People don’t pay for news (at least not like they did in the past) anymore and people are commenting on that fact.

  So yes- it is outrageous that that they think they will make their financial problems go away with a paywall. It will be a failure in the end, as it should be.

  In business you adapt to new conditions- not claw and scrape to maintain the status quo (I’m looking at you movie and music industry).

  Comment by Pavel — Monday March 18, 2013 @ 10:53pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Pavel, with all due respect, I think you have your head up your rear end. And your butt cheeks are so damn tight, it’s cutting off circulation to your alleged brain.

    You put forth the argument that “people” don’t pay for news. Well, that’s because “people” are getting news from aggregators (and this includes some local TV “news” websites) that cull the AP wires, blogs, and other sources. As long as the originating sources for the news don’t charge, those outlets will be ok. As more and more news originators, however, realize that uncovering quality news comes at a price, those outlets, too, will charge — and, yes, the buck will get passed over to you and me.

    I am confounded that people think journalism — especially of the watchdog variety — comes out of ether. Reporters/ editors need salaries to feed their families. Media outlets need budgets to send them into “war zones”, from Iraq to those closer to home, including inside the DC beltway, or local City Hall.

    You don’t expect Howard Schultz to give you coffee for free, right? You don’t get ESPN or Direct TV or the NFL Network for free, right? Why should journalism be different? (And before you lambaste the Washington Post as “drivel” or “polemical” or “piss poor”, remember it was the Post that did an awesome, Pulitzer-prize winning job uncovering shortcomings at the Walter Reed medical center, where thousands of vets, old and new, were getting shortchanged by third-world health care — a case of our tax dollars NOT working. Quality journalism — Nikki and Deadline.com can attest to this — comes with having the financial resources to report and research thoroughly, in addition to having legal muscle to protect you when some numb nut with no leg to stand on threatens to sue.

    Surely you can fork out a few pennies a week for quality reportage. If we, as a nation, cannot, then we deserve all manner of ills and exploitation visited upon us. When a Democracy is not well informed or enlightened, then it is only a matter of time before it circles the drain.

    Comment by bobby the saint — Tuesday March 19, 2013 @ 5:56am PDT  Reply to this post

• The WaPo is dying a slow death, and this is just another death throe. You know it’s bad when it needs to be propped up by its Kaplan Test prep bussiness. Maybe if they weren’t so overtly biased they’d attract a larger readership.

  Comment by Asuka — Tuesday March 19, 2013 @ 6:46am PDT  Reply to this post

• And look who just became irrelevant.

  Comment by Thanks for coming — Tuesday March 19, 2013 @ 8:15am PDT  Reply to this post

• I’m only paying if they hire Zoe Barnes.

  Comment by npr — Tuesday March 19, 2013 @ 8:51am PDT  Reply to this post

• Good riddance to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Use to be respectable. Now the tabloid version of political and world news.

  Comment by Sacramento — Tuesday March 19, 2013 @ 1:55pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I will pay for quality journalism, not tendentious opinions masquerading as news. The Washington Post – like the New York Times – has become another mouthpiece for the Democeatic party. American journalism has a major, major problem, and those who work in that profession are too intellectually dishonest to even admit their bias, much less correct it. So spare us the sanctimonious claptrap about guardians of democracy – they are nothing more than lapdogs and gleeful water carriers. When that changes, then you might find the public (at least the half of it that has been ignored, insulted, and regularly dismissed) more willing to pay for news.

  Comment by Asuka — Wednesday March 20, 2013 @ 6:07am PDT  Reply to this post