The KC Star website now requires a paid membership
 

What an absolute crock of shit. You can read the New York Times and Washington Post online, but you have to pay if you want to read the freaking Kansas City Star??? I'm not sure who was behind this stupid business decision, but it's so ridiculous that Scott Pioli must be involved somehow.

We have landed on the MOON

Just a desperation move to try and stay in business. Newspapers are dying.

Somebody just buy one and post it all. That'll learn em~

Q

Every story I clicked on opened

It's because newspapers are bleeding and they're trying new revenue streams. Subscriptions and advertising are down about everywhere because people are going on-line more and more... so they're trying to recoup the money from it.

Bigger city papers like NY have a much larger subscription/advertising base to draw from so they haven't hit on as hard of times yet. Yet.

I had no problem earlier today.

The good news for the people who pay the membership is that the KC star website traffic will be nonexistent and they'll lose all their advertisers, eliminating all of those annoying popup ads.

It started within the last hour or so, because I had no problem earlier either. People are already bitching about it on Twitter.

Clean out your cookies and you should be able to view articles again.

They open, but after about 5 seconds a Press+ membership banner covers the article so that you can't read it.

Wasn't this talked about several months ago?

I use Firefox, it says I have to pay. When I use Google Chrome, it opens.

Figure that one out.

No problem yet on iPad.

Didn't' work. Cleared cookies and still got the banner after about 5 seconds.

Here's Mellinger responding to someone who was bitching about it on Twitter.

Sam Mellinger ‏@mellinger

@Jwoody87 @KCStar there's a lot of money and effort put into the product. Should be OK to charge a small fee for that.

Use addblock or NoScript maybe? I didn't have any problems just a second ago.

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showt...C+Star+Paywall

Might be some info in this thread that will help you. :shrug:

In other news :

The KC Star website no longer has any traffic.

You gotta pay to play.

How much is it?

I did a Google search, came up with this post, followed the advice and it worked. I use Firefox as my browser, and when I switched it to private browsing I was able to access the articles without the banner blocking me.

Ben says:
"December 31, 2012 at 2:56 pm

BYPASS PAYWALL
Just use the private browsing function of your browser. It bypasses the paywall. LOL."

I think it makes sense. Why should they give it for free? Now, they would have to upgrade the product quite a bit to win my subscription, but if even a small portion of their readers sign up, it's almost certainly worth more than just click-through ads.

One of the biggest stories in KC sports, in at least a decade is developing in Philly the past few days with Andy Reid and the KC Star has no one on the ground there covering it.

Enough said.

ROFL. :clap:

Me too. At at rate of $0, I think I can swing that.

I was upset about the Star too. I look at papers from every place I have lived-all of them are requiring pay now. Who the heck can afford that?

True-papers are dying. But it will come to the point that we won't be able to get any info for free.

I think we said the same thing about TV 20 or more years ago. Now what do we pay for TV.

This world stinks.

The KC Star employs people who depend on the newspaper making money to pay them.

Nobody is entitled to free information.

I get if you think it's a bad business model. But people who bitch about them trying to make money need to just ****ing stop.

:spock:

click on a few NY Times articles.

Lemme know what happens the 15th or 20th time. And no, clicking through from google links don't count, just browse the web site.

Pay for it, you cheap F'ing bastard.

You wont hear us sympathize about how its so hard to rob the corner store. You can get national news for free? Big woop, no one cares, it costs money to get you local news, if you dont wanna pay for it, then why do you expect to get it?

This. I've made it a point to not get on people's case about it. But I've actually been called out a few times because I post a link, but refuse to copy/cut/paste the article into a thread. It drives me a little bit nuts.

I dont' complain about it because I know I'm guilty of it too. But I don't know what kind of ridiculous people think we live in where a company like the KC Star is going to operate by giving everything away from free. Especially in today's world, where people know that banner advertising is not overly effective.

install ad block, works like a champ for tons of websites.

And if I pay for it? I'm still going to have to sift through tons of annoying popup ads that somehow bypass my popup blocker. That's what all the ads are for, so they don't have to charge readers for content. If they're not profiting from ad revenue alone, then here's a thought--don't let all your good ****ing writers walk. No offense intended to Sam Mellinger.

This was bypassing my ad blocker, but I switched to private browsing and that took care of it. So I guess only people who can't Google a solution have to pay--kind of like a stupid person tax, which I have no problem with. They would've just spent that money on lottery tickets and 99-cent cheeseburgers anyway.

hmm. i just read an article on there using google chrome and ad block and have had no issues.

There is also a setting within ad block that blocks everything, but you have to manually set it or some ad's will get through.

internet ads aren't worth a damn, you idiot. You proved it yourself by describing the lengths you go through to avoid seeing them.

eventually they will fix that, too. Then all of you cheap, utterly immoral thieves will be forced to pay.

When someone who could presumably live in any state in the country and chooses to live in Iowa calls you an idiot--it really stings, let me tell you.

Newspapers are barely staying afloat these days. I don't blame them for trying to monetize their content more effectively.

whether it stings or not, the fact remains, you... ARE... reeruned

So you are saying...

I won't give you any money!

AND

Spend a bunch of money for better writers!!

Am I right?

**** the star I scroll down and read past the ad pop up to login. Then I hit kshb.com

Personally I think most of the media should be forced to shoot themself in the face but maybe it's just me.

This

i wont be forced anything, i just wont read. lol

This is the direction that newspapers online have been headed for a while now. You can probably circumvent it if you wish to, but the reality is that if people don't pay for it then they will go out of business.

How in the world do you expect a newspaper to pay for good writers if people are "stealing" good content? You do realize that when they sell banner advertising, you pay for number of impressions or pay-per-click, right? So every time you bypass the banner ad through an ad blocker or every time people copy-cut-paste an article and don't visit the website, you are hurting their ability to make money through online advertising.

Just hit ESC after the page first loads the article, it'll stop the script that brings the pay banner up.

Star is a business in business to stay in business and to make a profit. They do what they must do. They are not a non- profit or a poorly run government program.

Print media is becoming obsolete, ahh well. Surely they can get all of those annoying ads and not charge like most everyone else yes?