Wow, the Star is gonna charge paper subscribers an additional fee to access the online content. Money grab!!!





http://www.kcconfidential.com/2012/1...ons/#more-7669




In a letter dated Wednesday November 7th, Chris Christian told with readers they will be automatically charged an additional 69 cents per week for the newspaper’s new E-Star online content. Whether they want it, use it or not.

Put another way, that’s about $36 a year times 183,000 weekday subscribers or a little more than $6.5 million a year.

Kinda puts the 69 cents figure in perspective, huh?
But nowhere in the letter does it specifically point to an opt out path for subscribers.

Which would have been nice since an untold number of the Star‘s aging print readership probably has little if any interest in its new online options.

On top of that, six of the newspaper’s longtime, regular features will now be billed extra to subscribers at the rate of $2 a pop. Features like its “Football Preview” and”Summer Planner” special sections.

Subscribers will be billed even for snoozers like and the “Personal Finance Guide,” “Consumer Technology” and “Kansas City Food” sections.

And of course, who could forget the Thanksgiving Day newspaper. Which the Star explained a couple years back would cost extra because they’d sold so many ads it cost more to print and deliver.

So much for the concept of the ad revenue paying the freight. Now readers have to pay extra to subsidize the advertising content.

Go figure.

As Bill Clinton might say, let’s do the math.

That’s another $2, 200,000 for the “extra” sections that used to be free.

Bringing the grand total of the Star‘s money grab to around $9 million a year.

Again, with no reference to subscribers of how to opt out of any or all of the six special sections.

For the record, subscribers can call the newspaper’s Customer Service Department at 877-962-7826, Monday through Friday between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. and haggle over the added new costs.

newspaper ads aren't worth a damn. Digital ads on newspaper web sites are worth even less.

The KC Star and other papers are not swimming in gold Scrooge McDuck-style, they are losing money. Really hard to blame them for putting up a paywall, any newspaper which is NOT charging yet, is insane.

Buncha' cheap bastards

How exactly d you expect hem to stay a business?

People quit buying the paper for e version, revenue goes down.
Lay off people for cost of business or viewership decline, which in turn creates fewer articles, revenue goes down.

3 bucks a month is too much? I do not know if they have a digital only, but give me a break on the crying.

I don't begrudge them this. It will only buy them a little more time, though. Print and the old print/news business is dead. It's simply not how people get their news anymore and those companies still have far too much overhead to be profitable. Plus the writing is so terrible these days.

Basically, news-collection sites will snippet as much as copyright allows and you'll get the gist of stories. Radio stations will still host shows with the beat writers and we'll get the same info. Twitter/Facebook will still propagate the basics of any pertinent article without anyone needing to pay for it.

It blows me away that anyone with a brain would get upset by this.

If you value the content the Star provides, you will pay the monthly subscription. If you don't, you won't pay it. It's that simple. No one has a God-given right to receive free content from newspapers.

Business decision. Pure and simple. Star is not in business to give away its' product. What business is?

Except that radio is also dying. This whole "we'll still get the news forwarded/retweeted" argument presumes that someone is paying the writers.

There will always be a demand for local news produced by someone with more credibility than a blogger. That demand may or may not be enough to pay for the local writers that currently exist, but online news behind a paywall, in some form, will continue and eventually they will aggressively defend their IP, just like that Las Vegas newspaper which sues every message board which has a story copy-pasted onto it.

National news might always be able to be ad-driven, but when local news becomes one great big scout.com board, people will start paying for it if the price is reasonable.

Babb left.

**** 'em.

That's true, but on the other hand I wouldn't bother paying to read the Star online.

probably will die

See ya....

however, i will say that i have seen their online edition and it is pretty cool, but no thanks.

Des Moines Register has a pay wall. I just reset Safari and keep reading.

They should just do what the right-wing "news" sources do--just make stuff up and you don't have to pay nearly as many reporters. LMAO


To DC in 3..2..1...

hey, look! An ass wants to bring his DC stuff to the lounge!