You know it. I know it. The newspaper folks know it. Heck, The Onion knows it.
And in these trying economic times, the Cincinnati Enquirer is doing everything in its power to remain solvent and profitable.
They've consolidated the Cincinnati Post and Enquirer together (a few years back).
They have shrunk the size of the print edition at least twice that I know of.
They've outsourced the writing of most of their neighborhood content to local people looking to promote their own events, setting up a largely web2.0 article generator.
Now they're putting their online content behind a pay wall, allowing folks only twenty (or maybe it was thirty) free articles before locking the rest of their articles down for subscribers only.
Before hitting this pay wall, though, readers are treated to full-page, click-through ads for Furniture Fair (I tried to do a screen cap, but the ad disappeared as I hit the print screen button)...animated advertisements with rain and skidding cars...pop-up banner ads...
pop-up window ads for LowerMyBills.com...
...banner ads across the top and right-side of the screen...
...a slide-back countdown for the number of free articles the reader has left...sponsored links at the bottom of the page...another floating banner ad at the bottom of the page...
and a website that hasn't been redesigned in at least five years.
I can't promise that the post-subscription website still has all those ridiculous ads (I haven't paid), but I'm guessing it still does. The neighborhood content looks to still be free, as does the list of news stories within each category (news, local, sports, business, etc), but everything else directs you to a screen that looks like this...
Clicking on the close X sent me back to the main news page.
I get that the NYTimes has been partially successful with the transition to a paywall (temporarily suspended in the wake of Sandy), allowing ten free articles per month before a reader has to pay for more access. The Cincinnati Enquirer is not, however, the New York Times. They aren't remotely the New York Times. They are a local paper with a website designed to annoy rather than to inform.
They are, however, the only game in town. Nobody else in town covers the Cincinnati news market, though I'm thinking there might be a market for one soon because I'm just about done with the Enquirer and their grasping at monetary straws instead of improving the consumer experience.
3 comments:
The Indianapolis Star and Louisville Courier-Journal have done exactly the same thing. I get around it by checking from my work computer, iPhone, home computer and Meg's iPad. That's 120 stories a month instead of 30.
From what I can tell the Enquirer has a limit of 20 articles...total...ever...not per month. If that turns out to be the case, they're totally shooting themselves in the foot.
At the same time as the CJ did it they also raised the rates of their print edition though. I believe it is double what it was before the raise. The online content is cheaper, but still quite costly (can't remember, but the parents were mortified). They have since gone to a Sunday only edition which does allow for online viewing, but the parents refuse to sign up knowing they will never use it.
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