Syracuse.com is a pay site now? | Page 6 | Syracusefan.com

Syracuse.com is a pay site now?

What if those said 4 started their own website dedicated to SU sports? Is their anything to stop them? Doesn't seem it would take a lot of extra money. Don't need an office. They can work from home. Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
What if those said 4 started their own website dedicated to SU sports? Is their anything to stop them? Doesn't seem it would take a lot of extra money. Don't need any office. Thoughts?

They could go to the Athletic like the Louisville best writer did.

Interesting enough I still don’t have to pay and can read their content free.
 
They could go to the Athletic like the Louisville best writer did.

Interesting enough I still don’t have to pay and can read their content free.

There is a certain limit before they completely block it out. I've reached that limit. But you can still browse "incognito" and read everything- not that I would encourage such shenanigans.
 
so it comes down to people wanting to have people who get paid to write, produce content and give it away for free and then when that doesnt work have them start their own site and give it away for free and if not give it away for less than $20 a month?


people want a paper and the content but dont want to pay for it. they stop reading it but want the content too.
 
There is a certain limit before they completely block it out. I've reached that limit. But you can still browse "incognito" and read everything- not that I would encourage such shenanigans.

My Syracuse.com reading has definitely decreased over the past 5 years. The site has gone downhill and it’s turned into a tabloid like site with little to no real reporting.
 
My Syracuse.com reading has definitely decreased over the past 5 years. The site has gone downhill and it’s turned into a tabloid like site with little to no real reporting.

Agree. I still enjoy the basketball coverage. I think Mike and Donna are very solid. I like Chris Carlson - he seems to put a lot of effort into his 'research" pieces. Football coverage - I miss Rahme and Webb.
 
maybe the paper should just come up with multiple section streams.. $20 for the paper. $10 for news $5 for HS/Sports..
Exactly what I was thinking. 20 dollars is too much for me, as I don't live in the area, and don't have a ton of investment of the nitty gritty day to day news (shooting on Salina, etc...). I DO have an investment in Syracuse sports though, and would gladly hand over five dollars a month for that content. If it means Mike Waters and Donna Ditota continue to do amazing work, I'd do it.

As a former broadcast and print journalist, nary a day went by when we wouldn't complain about the accountants taking over journalism. The Pandora's Box that is free online content was opened by the journalists. Editors and managing editors thought this cute little niche place (the Internet) would be a great secondary source of advertising money. They never realized the monster the Internet would become. Once they allowed people to read content for free and advertising for print editions still hadn't caught up -- well, the print journalism racket committed suicide. In this case, it would have been nice if accountants made the call. I think if that had happened, paywalls would be the norm, and people would accept them with no issue.
 
maybe the paper should just come up with multiple section streams.. $20 for the paper. $10 for news $5 for HS/Sports..

Yes, this.

I have less than zero interest in local Syracuse news, as I live 3+ hours away.
(I don't even really care all that much about my local news, for that matter)

I would consider paying $5 a month for access to the Sports sections, and to support those writers, as those are really the only things I ever click on Syr.com anyway.
 
Can't believe syracuse.com went pay to view starting today for me. That's nuts, it's one of the few local sites i was following, this is just dumb, i'm not paying 20 bucks a month to view online content that should be free...
 
Can't believe syracuse.com went pay to view starting today for me. That's nuts, it's one of the few local sites i was following, this is just dumb, i'm not paying 20 bucks a month to view online content that should be free...

not sure how it went pay for you TODAY... but its very dumb.

i believe syracsue.com was routinely per capita #1 local news site in the country because of how many out of towners use it to stay in touch with the city. some for good reasons, some for obits, some for sports, some just use it as a vehicle to trash the city which drives me up a wall.

but going from $0 to $20 per month is outrageous. Give me $12 per year or $24 per year paid in full auto resubscription and i wouldnt bat an eye at it. $20/mo is extremely disrespectful and every exec there should be banned from any leadership role for life. it was such a poor attempt at a money grab that was not thought out at all. i sincerely hope they didnt pay a mckinsey or another consulting firm for any of that because it HAS TO be causing a slow and very painful death.
 
and what makes it even worse is that our local writers are really good.

it crushes me that waters, ditota, axe, carlson, the football guys are going to be the real victims in this horrific business decision. a business decision that had nearly 0% chance of succeeding. it was jaw dropping in its stupidity when i heard that was the path they were taking.
 
and what makes it even worse is that our local writers are really good.

it crushes me that waters, ditota, axe, carlson, the football guys are going to be the real victims in this horrific business decision. a business decision that had nearly 0% chance of succeeding. it was jaw dropping in its stupidity when i heard that was the path they were taking.

Eh, Axe isn't a writer. Giving him a salary while they were putting veteran professional journalists out of work is one of many reasons I won't spend a dime on their content.
 
Another factor helping kill local newspapers...

(after mentioning the web and advertising losses)

This story is all too true as far as it goes. But it leaves out one major player: the private equity industry. Private equity has been gobbling up newspapers across the country and systematically squeezing the life out of them to produce windfall profits, while the papers last. The cost to democracy is incalculable. Robust civic life depends on good local newspapers. Without the informed dialogue that a newspaper enables, the public business is the private province of the local commercial elite, voters are uninformed, and elected officials are unaccountable.

COMPANIES WITH NAMES LIKE Alden Capital, Digital First Media, Citadel, Fortress, GateHouse, and many others that you’ve never heard of have purchased more than 1,500 small-city dailies and weeklies. The malign genius of the private equity business model, of which more in a moment, is that it allows the absentee owner to drive a paper into the ground, but extract exorbitant profits along the way from management fees, dividends, and tax breaks. By the time the paper is a hollow shell, the private equity company can exit and move on, having more than made back its investment. Whether private equity is contained and driven from ownership of newspapers could well determine whether local newspapers as priceless civic resources survive to make it across the digital divide,


Saving the Free Press From Private Equity
 
This is weird. I got those annoying warnings and was blocked but some days I’d check and get in and some days I couldn’t. Then for a month I was in. Now the last few days I’m blocked.
 
This is weird. I got those annoying warnings and was blocked but some days I’d check and get in and some days I couldn’t. Then for a month I was in. Now the last few days I’m blocked.
This happened to me today too. My wife has been blocked for weeks, while I’ve been able to view daily with no issues. Today it ended. I’d love to see stats released that show how many people actually signed up for the outrageous monthly subscription.
 
so it comes down to people wanting to have people who get paid to write, produce content and give it away for free and then when that doesnt work have them start their own site and give it away for free and if not give it away for less than $20 a month?


people want a paper and the content but dont want to pay for it. they stop reading it but want the content too.


They cut the price to $10 about a week after the $20 price was first announced.
 
It still says $19.99 for me.

I got an email about a week after the first price announcement. I haven't had any articles blocked yet.
 
I pay $27.77 for 13 weeks of the Online Post Standard and Syracuse.com. That’s a little over two bucks a week. Living two hours from Syracuse I can’t get a same day hard copy of the paper.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
167,139
Messages
4,682,218
Members
5,900
Latest member
DizzyNY

Online statistics

Members online
317
Guests online
2,108
Total visitors
2,425


Top Bottom