I actually pay for the NY Times digital edition because it is the first paper I read every day, and I read dozens of articles daily, so it just made sense for me to pay for it. This, on the other hand, will never receive a penny from me:
This summer, The Washington Post will start charging frequent users of its Web site, asking those who look at more than 20 articles or multimedia features a month to pay a fee, although the company has not yet decided how much it will charge.
The paper said, however, that it would exempt large parts of its audience from having to pay the fees. Its home-delivery subscribers will have free access to all of The Post’s digital products, and students, teachers, school administrators, government employees and military personnel will have unlimited access to the Web site while in their schools and workplaces.
I wish the paywall would be stricter and there would be no exemption for students, educators, and the government. I can’t think of anything better for the country than making it far more difficult for people to be exposed to the perverse views of Marc Thiessen, Jackson Diehl, Jennifer Rubin, Charles Lane, George Will, Krauthammer, and the rest of the sociopaths over there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hate the Hiatt/Lane part of the paper so much I’ve gotten out of habit of even looking at the Washington Post. They do have some good reporters, as I was reminded this weekend when I stumbled over a piece on Iraq by Rajiv Chandresekaran, 5 Myths you think you know about Iraq, or something like that. Myth number 1: “The surge worked”. I suspect that would come as a shock to Messrs Hiatt, Lane and at least a dozen others.
Roger Moore
I’m amazed that they didn’t put their Op-Ed pages outside the paywall. After all, the primary purpose of the paper is to spread propaganda, so you might as well give the stuff that’s unmixed with any expensive to gather facts away for free.
BGinCHI
The only reason to pay anything would be Greg Sargent.
Litlebritdifrnt
I like Sargent and Capehart. Seeing as my DH is a school teacher I have a sure fire way of getting past the paywall :)
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: Yep. Actually, we should only have to pay for the information. Their opinions are worthless and might as well be priced accordingly.
schrodinger's cat
Stopped reading the Pravda on the Potomac a long time ago. So this won’t affect me at all.
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
I would say that their opinion section is full of negative information, so they should have to pay us for reading it.
Warren Terra
There is Ezra’s House of Reported, Serious-Minded Opinioning, which is not only the best thing at the WaPo but one of the better things in traditional newspaper websites (and is configured to require a clickthrough for each story). But it’s not enough to justify the access fees, not unless they’re really low.
drkrick
I’ll miss the home town sports coverage, but not enough to even consider paying for it. The opinion and news coverage went off my menu a long time ago.
joel hanes
Does Walter Pincus still write for them ?
Looks like maybe he does.
So they still employ at least one actual journalist.
themann1086
George Will is, apparently, run in the Philly Inquirer. I skimmed his op/ed yesterday which was basically a “there are TOO intellectual reasons to deny teh gayz rights” whine. If I had a subscription to the Inqy, I’d cancel it.
Anne Laurie
Greg Sargent, Harold Meyerson, a whole bunch of hard-working reporters entirely separate from the pundits. (And Carolyn Hax.)
If I have to choose, I’ll subscribe to the Washington Post over the NYT. It’s not as though every phart from the ‘paper of record’ won’t get endlessly linked across the blogoverse anyways!
OzarkHillbilly
Does this mean I am going to have to pay for Greg Sargent?
fuckwit
Has the WSJ already done this? If not, will they do so soon? Please?
pseudonymous in nc
@fuckwit:
The WSJ has long charged for its news content, while its opinions are offered for free. The market principle to be deduced from this is left to the reader.
(The kind of people who need to subscribe to the WaPo probably work in jobs where it can be deducted somewhere along the line as a business expense. That’s certainly the case with the WSJ, FT and Economist, and probably applies to the NYT to some degree.)
Scamp Dog
@Anne Laurie: The first couple of comments on the article about the Rhode Island town were ugly, complaining that the couple subsisting on SNAP (food assistance) funds were paying on cell phones, a $90/week car and some tattoos.
Umm, how do you get around in this country without a car? They’re in small town RI, not NYC. And cell phones aren’t outrageous extravagances any more, especially if you’re a couple working several part-time jobs at odd hours and would like to be able to coordinate efforts. I’ll fault them minorly for the tattoos, but I’m willing to forgive people an indulgence or two. (I’m curmudgeonly enough to disapprove of tattoos in general, but alas, the times are against me, there).
Flimflam
Other than a few writers in the Sports section ( Feinstein and Boswell), the rest of the Post is complete and utter drivel. International and local coverage sunk into the depths years ago, and most of their national ‘reporting’ is really nothing more than a collection of puffed up he-said she-said press releases. Oddly enough, we still find value in the Sunday paper because of the coupons, so we still buy that on the weekends, without bothering to read one word of the print addition.
Elizabelle
Wondering how this paywall will turn out.
The WaPost is now a mediocre paper with overactive rightwing trolls on its comment threads. (And writing for its op ed page, sigh.)
It’s nowhere near the NYTimes or LATImes in quality. Most of its good writers retired or took buyouts in recent years.
I don’t see how they attract that many digital subscribers, especially once you give “government employees” a free sub.
WaPost happens to be my local paper, but I’m no longer proud of it.
Evolving Deep Southerner
Jennifer Rubin. Nobody needs to say a damn word more. You pay that woman money, you prima facie ain’t worth a damn.
ETA: At least on their opinion pages.
dance around in your bones
Gads, I never read WaPo for free… let alone behind a paywall.
Uh…NoScript will take care of a lot of that crap for you. I can read NYT all day long (not that I do, much) because of NoScript.
Plus, as many folks have commented here, there are workarounds. So, sue me. I doubt I read more than 20 articles a month on NYT anyway. I get all my news filtered through Balloon Juice, and am happier for it.
Zelma
I’ll miss Carolyn Hax’s discussions. I try to support the sources I read online by subscribing to their print editions. I happily pay for the NYT. But I don’t think I’ll pony up for the Post.
Elizabelle
@Zelma:
I think the Post might find a lot of people feel that way.
Warren Buffett notwithstanding.
handsmile
I’m just now reading through this unspooled thread, but I am dismayed that not a single previous commenter has mentioned Dana Priest, arguably the best/most important investigative reporter now working for a mainstream American publication. (and that argument extends only as far as the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer.)
Long-affiliated with the Post, Priest has twice won the Pulitzer Prize: in 2006 for her reporting on and disclosures of CIA secret “black site” prisons (she also won a 2006 George Polk Award for that series) and in 2008 for her series exposing the deplorable conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In 2010 collaborating with independent journalist William Arkin, Priest published a series of articles, collectively titled “Top Secret America.” It detailed the vast national security industry, both governmental and private, that has proliferated, largely without oversight, scrutiny or public awareness, since the September 11 attacks. The series was expanded into a book, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, which should be required reading for those with the slightest interest or opinion on the subject.
I am grateful for and regularly read the work of a small handful of Kaplan Test Prep Daily employees: Klein, Sargent, Meyerson, Dionne (less so). Walter Pincus is largely absent from its pages in recent years and Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes infrequently since he became National Editor. But Dana Priest is the one truly essential staff member of that once proud newspaper. It is very disappointing that her work is not better known or her reputation better championed by this blog’s commentariat.
That handful aside, the present-day Washington Post, as embodied by that rogues’ gallery in John Cole’s post above, is the most pernicious mainstream newspaper published in the United States.
amy c
@handsmile: You make an excellent point about Dana Priest.
I also appreciate Petula Dvorak. Her reporting is much fluffier than someone like Priest (case in point: August’s “Women and frozen yogurt: ‘Like a glass of wine, but for the daytime’” – hard-hitting!). But she does some good local stories. She wrote several excellent columns in February about the problem of homeless families in D.C. She actually went to the homeless shelter, apparently multiple times, spoke to the residents, and told their stories in a meaningful way. This should be standard journalism, but isn’t really anymore. She’s also written some good stuff about the problems of poverty and violence in the city, and how nobody seems to outrage much when the kids who die are brown. Which we all know here, but it can’t really be said enough.
The Post also has Toles, who literally made me LOL today. Only thing on the Op-Ed page I even look at anymore.