I'm not currently a subscriber, and don't see losing access to the web site to be any great loss. I see this move by the DW as a mistake in that they will lose web traffic and thus fewer viewers for those who advertise on it.

I don't blame TDW for trying to locate a new profit center and/or trying to figure out a way to keep or gain subscribers. This current rendition won't do it, imo. I read the Letters. Other than that, not much. I've tried to get Mrs. Stash to stop taking the paper for a couple years. She keeps it for the ads.

Hint... Hint...

It's all about the ads. Most local businesses haven't figured out the tricks and, therefore, the value of internet adverstisingand driving traffic to their profit centers. At this time they will not pay a premium for it. Some are starting to figure it out. Others will sooner or later.

When that happens, TDW will wise up and do things to increase the value to advertisers.

It has been a slippery slope for years with the printed papers and fueled by the current "lack of" economy the slope has increased. This is one way to draw a line in the sand and know what you have to work with (good or bad). Probably not the path I would take but if corporate is using this as a test bed before larger decisions are going to be made why not test in an area like ours? I did not check to see if other papers owned by corporate are doing this as well?

The new site looks nice however if the end result is paid use good luck. I will say the ads stick out more, when not logged in, but now knowing that I can see no "valuable" content and needing to login will drive me to other sites like this one or others for local news.

It seems to me that the community has the ability to create its own content off of local "tweets" or other style updates to a platform such as this one and let the local community experts add valuable feedback to the "tweets", stories, etc? I am most amazed with some of the stories and feedback that has been created on this site by people that are in the “know”.

We need local news! How does it get supported moving forward should corporate pull the plug on the Daily World or scale things way back.

I dropped my DW subscription last year and haven't really missed it. I don't plan to subscribe to online edition.

According to this site,some papers "located in smaller, often rural markets" are going this route. I'd say it's too soon to call a trend.

It depends. I'd prefer to read it online and I'd pay a small fee to do it but it should be less than half the regular subscriber rate since they won't have the expense of printing and delivery.

Obviously, advertising plays a key role to the whole picture. When they decided to cut a day, they went with Monday, because it was in the least demand by advertisers. If they had looked at it from the subscriber viewpoint, they would have dropped the Saturday paper as it would have only been 12 hours or so after the Friday paper, leaving us without the paper for a day and a half. Instead, we are without the paper for 2 and a half days. Perhaps that is why they are getting the weekday papers out so much earlier now, I usually get it by 11:45 now.

Great list!

I will not be apart of this process. They lost me as a lurker who did read ads. I know they lost the older lurkers as some can not figure out how to work through the sign in process. They could just get to the dailyworld home page now this extra hurdle puts them out of being viewers.

That's the big one right there. I was actually considering doing some advertising with them, but I fear that their pageviews might actually go down with this change and make advertising with them less attractive. Going to have to wait until they actually make the switch and get some actual numbers in before deciding.

they lost the older lurkers as some can not figure out how to work through the sign in process

I guess I resemble that remark. I just tried to sign in, using my existing DW online registration info, and the site would not recognize that info. Guess I'll try opening a new account. It shouldn't be so tough. I look at several other, larger online papers daily, without this hassle.