A Newpaper at the Crossroads

Where do you get your news? I subscribe to the Globe and the Enterprise and Time and Newsweek. I listen to radio news on WBZ every day. Since I got my Barnes and Noble Nook, I've had an app called Pulse that draws from 60 news sources and which I check out each night. My browser of choice has a menu bar that always instant access to both Google Reader and my iGoogle page, both with multiple sources and a special menu bar tied to my favorite news sources. I don't watch TV news unless there is some special event like the recent hurricane (sorry, folks I didn't lose power in the storm).

All this makes it seem like I'm more linked into the universal news stream than I really am, but everything may be about to change again. I've blogged about my frustration with Globe home delivery. What once was a drop off at my door is now a toss at the end of the driveway. The once daily ritual of read the front page, check the op-ed page, and then read the sports and funnies over breakfast and a shave has given way to toss the paper in the car and hope to read it sometime during the day. The Enterprise is worse. I always check for Easton news, but that's it unless the Carneys are trying to put a casino in our backyard or South Coast Rail is trying to cut us in two with a train (two sides of the same story really).

So the news weeklies, the Nook and radio are my main news sources now, but the Globe wants to sneak back into my life. As mentioned earlier in the summer, the Globe is about to split its online presence into two parts. The for-pay version is free to viewers until September 30 (or "the Friday before Harvest Fair" in NRT speak). You can view it here and compare it to what will be the free version here. Luckily for my procrastinator's soul as a hard copy subscriber I get the online version free. The difference in cost is striking $49 a month for paper, $16 a month for online only.

Can the Globe make this work? Why would you pay for online service if there is a free service that does the same thing? You can check out the Globe's own comparison of its two products here. Without the subscription service I'd miss out on the funnies and contrary to their advertising not all the comics are in the online version-Red and Rover for instance. The daily chess puzzle is also missing and, unfortunately, Dan Shaughnessy's columns are still present in the sports section. The good news is that in the online version, it is easier to drop him an e-mail and meticulously detail his failings as a journalist.  Finally, while the online reading experience for most of the paper is pretty good, it's harder to read the comics online as you have to click through an alphabetical list rather than quickly scan a page.

The big plus for the Globe is supposed to be the ability to read the "whole" paper anywhere. That means I could read the paper on a school computer while the print version chills in my car. Hard to see why the wired in generation will pay for information they can get for free. The Globe may be overestimating the draw of their columnists and news analysts, but even there a smattering of them would be available in the free version. Another question is how would you pay those guys if every subscriber switched from paying $49 a month (with costs supplemented by ads) to $16 a month (with very limited ads)? Interesting story-I wonder if the Globe will be around to write it.