OT: StarTribune.com does not want your business

havent’ been on the STRIB’s website

in 2 -2 1/2 years.

Open the article you want to read, but stop the loading process as soon as you see text. That way the popup telling you that you are out of free articles won’t load.
At least that is what I discovered by accident.

And that’s why they have to pull stunts like this. But I’ve read differing opinions that say the real problem with journalism isn’t declining readership (it’s weathered that before) so much as the massive wave of conglomerate takeovers, LBOs, and such. In the Strib’s case, that’s almost certainly been a factor — their new owners saddled them with a staggering amount of debt.

Personally I started getting my Twins news here and from the major national sites once I heard about that move on their part. I agree — making blogs a pay service is lame. But I think some of the TwinsCentric guys post their Strib articles on their individual blogs, don’t they? Or am I wrong?

I read the Strib online almost everyday and have never ran into these issues. I definitely never get any ads on their homepage. I have ABP for Chrome though, that may help….

Running Firefox with adblock and noscript, don’t see any ads or hear any ads, and I just clicked on about 30 articles with no issue.

(Shameless plug: NoScript — don’t http without it).

and used to love keeping track of what was happening in Minnesota and the Twins through the Strib online. She experienced the same thing (the 20 article limit) and said there was no way she would pay to read an out of town online newspaper, so now she gets her news elsewhere. Strib’s loss.

All print media is having a hard time of it with the advent of the internet, but the Strib has gone about the transition poorly. First, they dropped some of their popular local columnists (i.e. Lileks, CJ, and some others I can’t remember. Not necessarily endorsing these, just mention them as they are local. I think Reusse may have been in the original mix too.). I mean, isn’t the local news and flavor the only reason to subscribe to a local periodical? We can get national news elsewhere, and probably better reported, too. There was some public outcry and they reinstituted some, but they had already lost readership. They kept Souhan (Does he even LIKE sports? Does he like ANYTHING?) and Reusse, who I think is just there to try to stir things up now and then. Where are the hometown guys, who root for our teams? I guess it’s not sophisticated to be an unabashed fan these days. It should be possible to write objectively about a home team, giving constructive criticism when needed and praise when warranted, but they went the route of having reporters who inject almost every column with sarcasm and/or pretension, as though, yes they are indeed writing about a sporting event, but in a detatched, above-it-all manner. That said, Joe C and Lavelle are OK.

I’m glad for Twinkietown.

but read I read somewhere if you use private browsing in firefox it doesnt run into the article limit.

I have the startrib app but it’s half the content…

and have the issue with the 20 free articles. However, I can read the blogs (without the comments) by clicking the name of the blog instead of the article within the blog. For example, if you want to read all of the TwinsCentric entries, just click TwinsCentric, not the article title.

Disclaimer: I detest the StarTrib and don’t EVER read an actual physical newspaper and don’t use the online version of any newspaper as a primary news source.

As much as I dislike the star trib, PiPress is much worse, and their website is borderline non-functional. You may complain about what Star Trib is doing, but the reality is newspapers across the country have learned that providing their web content for free is simply an untenable model, and StarTrib is actually hanging on better than most. I also don’t see how you deserve the right to complain that they aren’t giving you all their non-Sunday material for free. That costs a lot of money to produce. If you want to read, then pay.

Also, the Twin Cities don’t need two competing major papers anyway. One to be the major paper and another to cover the more local issues of the other city is fine. We aren’t that big of a city.