WTF are newspapers thinking?

Requiring registration to see content that is available on thousands of sites that do not require registration is just plain stupid. Even worse are those that allow you to view a few articles before blasting the "You have to register" page.

For some reason, newspapers seem to think we owe them for giving us content that can be found elsewhere hassle free. We don't owe them anything, they owe us. Without us they are going to die.

I worked for a paper in Victoria, TX from 2000 - 2005 as a webmaster (I prefer web developer but whatever). I saw first hand how those stuck in their old ways and not willing to change with technology disliked the paper's website for "stealing their customers", blaming us for their dropping subscriptions.

What they didn't understand, and what most papers still don't get, is it isn't only the content you are providing, it is also the delivery. Make it hard for people to get your content and they will get it elsewhere.

They did start "getting it" around the time I was leaving, at least those in charge of what the web department was allowed to do. They moved from a navigation nightmare with talks of possible forced user registration to a more simplified (maybe it is just easier to look at) approach. They aren't forcing you to register, at least not at the time of this posting.

I personally think they went a little overboard trying to push the site into a social hub for Victoria. I mean it is a newspaper company, people go there for news, more importantly local news. Social networks is what facebook is for.

They have fixed one major issue, after I left they started to use yahoo! for their classifieds. What once was a nice collection of local ads turned into an overwhelming list of national ads with local ads hidden in the mix. They eventually axed that terrible idea and went back to local only. Good job.

Enough about my old job, the reason for this rant is about forced registration. The Dallas paper more specifically. I like to go there because of their stories on the Cowboys. I should be more specific, I don't just go to their website, I see their stories from a gadget on my Igoogle page. I have it setup with alot of sports sites so I can see the latest headlines from all of them.

So I see a headline that interests me, I click it and read it. In the stories sidebar they list related stories which I visit to read more on the subject (Cowboys), but after going to 3 stories they want you to register.

Blah. I immediately close that tab (I browse in tabs) when I get that registration page instead of the article I was seeking. I do this with any site that doesn't allow the content to show and wants you to register.

So today in the side bar I see at least 9 stories I would read, but I only get to read 3 (the one I initially go to plus 2 from the sidebar). That may only sound like I missed 7 pages, or rather they dropped 7 page views to show potential advertisers on their traffic stats, but it goes a bit deeper then that, it deters me from going to their site in the first place.

I will never type their URL in the browser because viewing their homepage will eat up 1 view. I will also not go to their article if the headline is similar to the many others I see. I actually now only go to that site if it is something I don't see on espn.com, si.com, foxsports.com or the many other "news" sites that allow free reign on their articles.

I am willing to bet many others do exactly what I do. So that means their loss of traffic becomes huge, and traffic is what will keep them up. I read all the time how these big papers are blaming Google for their loss in revenue. If anything Google is helping them, giving people an easy way to get to their content, but that is another rant for another day :)

The classic response will be "just sign up, it only takes 30 seconds, don't be lazy". Well I don't owe that to the paper, the paper owes me easy access for helping keep them alive.