The Sun Chronicle hasn’t appreciated reader feedback recently and has now guarded its article comments with a 99 cent fee. So you can fill out the order form, pay almost a dollar, and comment freely thereafter. I don’t know if that system will apply to only this Massachusetts paper or also to the other two papers the D’Arconte company owns.
Of course I’d rather pay a dollar to comment on a story, instead of reading it somewhere else and commenting for free. Oh, and BTW, where do I send the check for this comment?
Seriously, newspapers have a dying business model. It’s really hard to sell information these days, when there is so much free competition out there. This is a dying business, grasping at straws.
My state’s largest paper has one token conservative columnist. I love reading the comments following her articles. Few ever challenge her facts or logic, but everytime she posts the comments fill quickly with questions of her intelligence and the intelligence of whoever hired her. Eventually Bush gets blamed for the whole fiasco.
Ha! I think that’s typical. One commenter on the linked page from my post or one after that said Metafilter.com charges $5 for using the site “to defray the costs.” That helps cut out spam and most stupidity, he said. So, in that sense, maybe it’s a good idea, but I wonder what comments got them riled.