[stextbox id=”alert” caption=”Facebook Rant from Ally M…”]Dear Ada Evening News or The Ada News or whichever is your official page. I do NOT want to have to sign up for an account to read obituaries. This is an annoying trend in websites lately. STOP IT![/stextbox]
Dear Ally,
The Ada News is a newspaper. As much as you might wish and hope it is a government service like a public library or the water department, it is, in fact, a business. Businesses are, well, in business, which means their purpose is to make money. Unlike the city or the county or the country, who can raise taxes, your taxes, to build roads and pay the firefighters, businesses like the daily newspaper have to charge for their services, and that includes web services.
It really surprises me that someone like you, who has spent her life towing the conservative/right wing line, seem to have such an obviously socialist attitude about the business of running a newspaper. Or is it simply that you simply think you are somehow entitled to the newspaper?
So your choices are pretty clear…
- Start your own newspaper and give it away for free
- Actually pay for the present product
- Or your solution, whine about it
Maybe you would like it if I got on Facebook and demanded, simply because I wanted it, free services from your business? Maybe I should come in and just start taking things off the shelf? That’s what you want, after all; the newspaper’s product for free. Some of your commenters suggested using a product called http://bugmenot.com to cheat the newspaper out of online subscriptions. Can I assume it would be okay with you if I used a web site to cheat your business out of its product?
Newspapers has been the watch dog and the guard dog of democracy, but they are not free to produce. If you want a product, you should understand the need to pay for it.
Oh no she didn’t!
Devil’s counter advocacy…
>> the obituaries at least were (usually) prepared by either the funeral home or family of the deceased and required minimal editing/formatting from the newspaper staff < < This is not relevant. When we publish something in our newspaper or on our web site, it represents our intellectual property. How we obtained it and how we sell it is our business. >> advertising (not the subscriptions) paid entirely for the salaries, operations costs, etc. of the business << This is an enduring myth in the newspaper industry, particularly in the 21st century, in which there are fewer paper subscriptions and more web/app products, which plays an increasingly significant role in the bottom line of news organizations.
Was this an actual rant on the paper’s Facebook page? Who is this person? She makes a compelling argument, thoughtful, rational and lucid, based entirely on what she WANTS. Yeah, right. I agree totally with you, Richard. (And I’ve heard it said, by morons, that newspapers are all either A) owned by the same company or B) by the government.)