mr. los angeles times: tear down this wall!

Posted on By Wil

Hooray! From LA Observed, via blogging.la:

It’s official

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Comments (21)

  1. Its great that the wall is coming down. I used to read the Times before to find out what was going on across our continent. I hope that you are successful in finding the story. Love to read it.

  3. Amazing. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. I’m a weekend subscriber and always got pissed off when I’d try to use CalendarLive to find details on something going on around town.

  4. Wil wrote: “I’ll search the Calendar archives and see if I can find that story. ”
    Please do, I’d love to read it! I am underwhelmed by papers that do the subscriber-only thing. [shakes head]

  6. Well I’m glad to hear that the LA Times has wised up finally. I was quoted in the Times a few months ago, luckily that story wasn’t behind the “great wall of times”.
    Not sure what marketing retard thought that making people pay was a “financially responsible idea”.
    All I can say to them is “you’re fired”.
    🙂 Kel

  7. I’m gratified to hear this; putting their stories behind a paywall was the quickest ticket to irrelevance the Times could have thought of. In many respects on the Web, if it can’t be indexed by Google, it doesn’t exist.Here’s hoping all the other newspapers doing this catch a swat with a clue-by-four soon.

  8. Hey… did you see the blog quiz? You were one of the answers…link to Tfark thread on it
    Anyways… I wondered if you ever looked on Livejournal? There quite a few of us who have you on RSS and comment…
    txt_eva

  9. The NY Times has a subscriber thingy… you can’t access certain things online without first signing up. But, it’s free, so I don’t complain about it.

  10. I think the L.A. Times should get SOMETHING out of their readers: I know! Let’s make computer require that we have to put in our swell new National ID card into a slot, so when we visit a website, the site owners (and the government) can see just who is browsing where. Then, when your child is issued his or her ID card upon birth in a federally approved delivery unit, of course (after the 9 months of prerequisite federal examinations [with the federal conception request having been submitted before this] including the mandatory iTaV-1040 parenting license test,) he or she can simply slide their card into the home computer and be taught the federally approved curriculum based on what sections they have mastered previously and what their socio-economic levels dictate they should know; no more, no less.
    Gee, what a swell idea…

  12. “I think the L.A. Times should get SOMETHING out of their readers: I know! Let’s make computer require that we have to put in our swell new National ID card into a slot, so when we visit a website, the site owners (and the government) can see just who is browsing where. Then, when your child is issued his or her ID card upon birth in a federally approved delivery unit, of course (after the 9 months of prerequisite federal examinations [with the federal conception request having been submitted before this] including the mandatory iTaV-1040 parenting license test,) he or she can simply slide their card into the home computer and be taught the federally approved curriculum based on what sections they have mastered previously and what their socio-economic levels dictate they should know; no more, no less.
    Gee, what a swell idea…”
    That would be funny – if it hadn’t given me chills first. Still waiting for my mom to call me and remind me Armageddon is coming…..

  13. There is a good reason for charging for the archives:
    A significant income stream for the print media is in sales to archivists and licensing the library of back issues.
    The L.A. Times would have a pretty weak bargaining position with, say, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw (and the many other similar commercial news databases) in the next round of contract negotiations if they made the archives available free.
    Similarly, think of the thousands of libraries in the country who would simply cancel their subscriptions.

  14. That’s a good point, Cheburashka. I was thinking only about personal use for individuals like me.
    Maybe they’ll come up with some sort of license for individual users, like a non-commercial by-attribution creative commons license. That way, guys like me could have access to the archives, and the Times would still be able to negotiate with companies like Lexis/Nexis.

  15. The fall of the Berlin wall marks a milestone for the success of capitalism.
    The fall of the LA Times wall marks a milestone for its failure.
    Interesting juxtaposition again, senor.
    Although, the argument could be made that the LA Times is just responding to capitalistic market forces at work. (Supply/Demand)
    But then again, John Maynard Keynes once said…
    …oh forget it… only 8 days until Sith! w00t!
    –AJ @ ERad

  16. I pay for content on the web only if it’s something I can not get elsewhere for free. For example, I really like GameSpot.com, and I paid for that so I could download their video reviews and all the other high-bandwidth content they have that I can understand why they need to offset the cost to provide. Of course, it has to be worth the cost, and I have no idea if the LA Times was worth it. The Houston Chronicle doesn’t charge for their online content but they do require free registration to a valid email address to access some of it. I can live with that, even if it is irksome and “not the way the www was designed to be.” It’s their content, after all.

  17. Having customers pay for the Calendar section was one of the stupidest moves the LA Times made (and trust me, they’ve made a lot of them). If I was an advertiser who had the option to have my ad relegated to a “pay only” section of their web site, no matter how popular it was, I wouldn’t do it.
    It all boils down to revenue, and since the Times is on the downslide in circulation (a 6.8% drop is HUGE), they better be coming up with new ideas or we may see it’s demise sooner than one would think.
    Come to think of it, that might not be a bad thing.

  18. EMAIL I RECEIVED FROM LA TIMES THIS MORNING:
    Dear Registered User,
    The Los Angeles Times today launched the first stage of a year-long initiative to improve and expand the newspaper

  19. Now how the hell did that double post happen? Must have been a hickup in the system, cuz I only hit the post button once…. (time stamps are the same too) WIL FIX!
    Have a nice day!
    🙂 KEL

  21. Next thing ya know is: When you go to use a Public Bathroom anywhere, you’ll have to put in a Quarter to get 1-sheet of Toilet Paper..
    … Oh well…
    Cheers Wil…
    Keith

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