Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you.
By now you shoulda somehow realized what you gotta do.
Yes, the OC Register’s “wonderwall” is up! And, to switch song lyric references from Oasis to Pretenders for a moment: “You mess with the goods doll — honey, you gotta pay.”
Uhhhhhhmmm — back to Oasis!
As the Orange Lady herself puts it:
Readers who want to browse the newspaper online must buy a subscription or pay a daily rate to have access to the website.
Non-subscribers can try the online Register for free for seven days. A limited amount of content such as weather, traffic, movie listings, the calendar of events and headlines of local news stories will remain free.
The story of how stories will no longer be free is itself one of the free stories. Dale Dykema’s call for the Supes to choose an actually competent non-politician to run the County Clerk-Registrar’s office — and you can (and should!) read Vern’s live blog on that event as it unfolds — is, on the other hand, not.
Political and news blogging in OC just got a little more important — and difficult.
“There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how.”
Yes, this is taken directly from the Oasis video. No, we don’t mean anything *specific* by it, necessarily. Especially not involving the previous paragraph.
We sometimes use the Register as a primary (well, a primary secondary) source to find out what’s going on in the county, so that we know what to talk about. We understand that (1) they need income in order to survive and (2) the Weekly already has the hookers, porn,and pot advertising market sewn up, so that’s closed to them. This puts them in a quandary: how to pay for all of the investigative reporters to unearth corruption in Orange County? As they say, the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post last week made the same decision: charge people to read the local news.
“And maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me.
Because after all — you’re my wonderwall.”
Apparently, paying customers have been complaining about other people knowing the same things about Orange County that they do. The Register hears your complaints and understands!
Are you interested in what information you can reprint from Register stories if you do subscribe to them? Yeah, me too. I didn’t find any expressed limitations beyond the standard 3-4 paragraphs of allotted “fair use.” But I’m not signing up to get access to their articles so that I can reprint the good stuff — at this point. (Will others? Duh.)
Anyway, the Register is onto all of our tricks.
Launched Tuesday, the Register allows non-subscribers to try the website free for the first seven days, but then readers will be required to pay. [President of Register owner Freedom Communications Eric] Spitz said there will be no way to “game” the system to access the Register using Google, URLs or other websites.
Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor who went into digital and is now a consultant, applauded the idea of charging for the content generated by newspapers and doesn’t think that paid access will turn away loyal readers.
“The price you charge is not a big deal for most people,” he said.
All right then! No problem! (Tentatively.)
Now, here’s what we’re NOT going to do. We’re not going to get all gleeful like the guys at OC Weekly and crank out three stories in four days (and counting) about the new paywall: that it’s coming, that they’re making fun of it coming, that readers don’t like that they’ve closed off comments about it coming — no, that’s the one on their newest porn star columnist, maybe it’s this one — no, that’s “lawyer asks judge to seal off photo of his penis, maybe this one? — nope, that’s “42 people we want to smoke with”, uh, geez, this one? — damn, “hottest babes of WonderCon” — don’t worry, we’ll find it later. Meanwhile, let’s go on to — WAIT, FOUND IT! (Sorry that it took a while; unlike the others, it wasn’t on the first page of their website.) We presume that the Weekly’s intense interest is based on the hope that readers will come to it rather than to the Register for their news — and as the above inadvertent tour suggests, they have good reason to think that they will!
So, no, we’re not going to get gleeful. We’re not going to start some sort of “deathwatch” for the Register.
Instead, we’re going to start a dearthwatch — as in, “dearth of online readers.” We’ll track, at least initially with the help of our lovely assistant Alexa, how their site stats fall over the course of the weeks to come.
Global website rankings (not to be taken too seriously, because we’re not paying for the “certified” results, sigh):
latimes.com: 546
ocregister.com: 6,021
utsandiego.com: 9,093 (for those unfamiliar, this is the Univ. of Texas, San Diego)
pe.com: 22,947 (Riverside’s Press-Enterprise; includes people mistakenly looking for Phys Ed)
ocweekly.com: 38,089
presstelegram.com: 70,874 (Long Beach)
sbsun.com: 101,097 (San Berdoo)
sgvtribune.com: 116,117 (no idea what this is — just kidding, SGValley!)
dailypilot.com: 162,222 [added 4/4]
voiceofoc.org: 524,986
orangejuiceblog.com: 787,536
newsantaana.com: 1,200,608
the liberaloc: 1,280,541
ocpoliticsblog.com: 1,607,606
ocpolitical.com: 2,948,995
We’ll keep an eye out on the Register and its dozen-plus of benchmark competitors — especially once the 7-day subscriptions that went into effect today expire! (Or Vern will overrule me. One of those.)
(Note: any volunteers out there other than me to do this Alexa research? It’s boring.)
The Bloviator’s obsession over us is downright tumescent—EW…
I see: Weekly‘s media criticism of Register: OK. My media criticism of Weekly: not OK.
As for “tumescent” — given the stories you’ve been working on, I can see where you came up with that one. Regards to the porn-star columnist!
Gustavo’s “obsession” comment is funny, noting that Greg’s post was up for just a few minutes before he shared with us his state of engorgement.
I’m just treating GA like he’s (1) a somewhat significant OC figure and (2) not insulated from criticism due to race or his larger audience. In other words, I’m treating him the same way I would anyone in his position — given that I’m a fan of actual alternative journalism, which is not like Fleet Street penny dreadfuls. Is that a sexual turn-on? Perhaps surprisingly to some: no.
That paper just follows an old formula documented by the Ian Dury song “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.”
There’s nothing original about it.
That’s why people pick it up to “read.”
Kinda like the articles in Playboy.
Did Drury have a follow-up called “Crime and Cynicism and Freakshows”? That would round things out.
(Don’t knock the articles in Playboy. When I was growing up, they had some good stuff, worth reading even if you were blind.)
I think Greg really started it this time, with “ERECT” in his title. How could Gustavo be expected to not stand straight up and take notice?
Hmmm, perhaps I did inadvertently stimulate him.
The bigger news is: the OC Register’s experiment is working well for them so far! Up to an international rank of 6000 even today, as people presumably try to make the most out of their 7-day free trials!
Aw hell they’ve been doing that for as long as anyone can remember.
I know that quality reporting is not free, but ever since newspapers jack up their prices to 1.50 a day for LA Times (newstand price), people do not want to pay that. I would love the old days of 25 cents M-SA and 1 dollar Sundays and I think most people would not object to paying that. Since delivery does cost, add an extra 5 bucks per 8 week billing cycle and we can call it a deal.
I hate paywalls, I guess we will need to fund and participate in our independent media efforts around this state.
I refuse to pay one “blue” cent for that Rag. Their Editorial Board makes the Tea Party seem progressive.
Personally , I love the fact they are walling themselves in away from the rest of us. It’s. like they “seceded” from the conversation.
We will have to step it up a notch…..no more writing stories about what they are writing about or more specifically “not” writing about.
Sadly , I predict all their racist, troll, low info, commenters will swell the ranks of all of us socialist progressive freeloading Internet users, but what can you do?
And yet, after all that well-placed angst, The Register is the ONLY local news source that is actually staffing up in every position required to produce a good product. They’ve got more reporters, editors, graphics folks and sales people and are doing a better job of covering the OC than any other entity.
Yes, we bloggers provide some tightly-focused opinions on issues based on some facts and a lot of our own bias, but we just can’t provide the broad coverage nor the in-depth reporting on a consistent basis.
Yes, Gustavo and his band of miscreant DO set a high bar for some of their investigative reporting and, simultaneously, maintain a pretty low bar for the comment content. It’s like eating watermelon – you just have to spit out the seeds.
Yes, you guys at the OJ, and a few other local blogs, provide perspective and passion on some issues, and that’s a valuable service to the community.
However, I’m willing to pay for access to news about our region provided by reporters on the ground. I’m a 30-year subscriber to the Register, so I’m in the game automatically. I also willingly pay the price for the Wall Street Journal – the BEST news reporting I read every day (except Sunday). That’s just the way it is…
I hope Kushner is successful with his grand experiment. Nobody else is doing it his way. I hope he’s a lot smarter than the rest, but say that with my fingers tightly crossed.
This has to be the first time newspaper subsribers were called the “monied elite”!
It’s $37 for five weeks right?
I wouldn’t subscribe because I think the Registers reporting stinks, poorly written and the research reflects a lack of insight. But, like anything else:
If you want it, buy it, if you don’t, don’t. I would think someone with your profession/hobby (blogging would fork over a buck a day……Just sayin’
Well, I did amend it to “semi-moneyed semi-elite”….
Information being limited to “moneyed elites” is a significant problem, but not so much when it comes to reading the Register. Re-read the sentence where that phrase occurs — it’s a more general point.
I got ya. I have always felt that “information” to “monied elites” was less harmful than BAD information to the masses. That’s how I’ve always looked at the OCR.
I can’t think of a time in the past ten years where they really have been on something (that they didn’t proceed to screw up), although, the recent article about the utter WASTE in California’s Community College system and redundant postions is a subject I have been hounding for years, but, again, they make a hallow point with weak reporting. Which is kinda my point:
If it’s a good product it will sell. If it sucks (like the newspaper has) it will die.
This should be good for the Orange Juice, Voice of OC, and the rest of us… but with great power comes great responsibility, as someone told Spiderman or something.
One of us needs to spring for a Reg subscription to keep tabs on things – how much is it again, we could split costs… $37 for 5 weeks Geoff says? Can we somehow do an OJ subscription?
Ten people, $3.75 each. Affordable. Lol
Woops! I meant $3.70! Lol. Damn cold.
Nah, it wasn’t me that quoted the number. I subscribe annually. But, hey, you guys with the big ad revenue can certainly pony up for a subscription, right? 😉
ha. My ad revenue covers my server fees, plus a cup of coffee or three.
How much is an annual subscription, Geoff? I’m in for $5, Vern. (That’s annually.)
occonnect.com: 229,361
Just sayin’
Oh. And FWIW OCVarsity.com, the Register’s high school sports section, is still free.
I’ve never be able to figure out what occonnect.com is or who is behind it. Do you know? It seems like a big secret.
Ha ha! It’s the biggest local site that nobody’s ever heard of. It’s been many things in its lifetime, but for the last 5 years it’s been the local message board. I’m behind it.
Like the sign at Newport’s most popular “secret” bar used to say, “Don’t tell nobody!”
Or, the First Rule of Fight Club….
I have a 7 day a week subscription, although I like my dead tree version with coffee in the morning (and i find it creepy to take an electronic device into the tiled library in the morning-I know, TMI) I have yet to get into the server to read online, since they have not reported anything lately I needed to link to. So when we need it, i can get the link, However, it does no good if our readers are not able to click on it once reached.
Personally I hope the Register makes a go of it, something has to work to pay these reporters or the entire industry is doomed. The complaints I see are from those who do not subscribe and claim they never will, so that is money the Register was never going to get and they have no reason to offer the info they paid to gather, free to those who exclaim they will not pay to access. What I do fear is those who only subscribe Thursday and Sunday (to get the Bulletin and Sunday paper) will drop the paper for not feeling loved enough, or current subscribers find the online version too much of a pain. My husband and I have long complained about the online search function,it is utterly worthless. Oh, you want to see something online you read this morning on paper? Nope, got nothing for you, here, have something on a similar subject from 6 months ago. I can put in the headline I read, word for word, and not get the article I wanted to link to, if they are going to charge they need to step up the ability to find what i am looking for. Otherwise, i wish them well, they pay for the info they need to find a way to market and sell that access. Let’s face it, those of us who write for free are kinda stupid…
Google works better for searching the site than their own search does.
I sort of doubt that many “dead tree” subscribers will use the site and I really doubt that the weekend subscribers will. It’s a good paper and I agree that they have to make money, but they have the most uninteresting home page in the newspaper business. I wouldn’t subscribe to that.
I like the idea of tokens to read the stories that are from newspapers not from your immediate area.
Who cares. The OC Register has become nothing but a spokeshole for the liberal left and the criminals in Orange County. I can get plenty of news from the Internet. If I want liberal nonsense I can always check the LA Times and CNN. The Register is a dead stick. I’m surprised they are still in business.
HAHA! Okay, a couple of examples of how the Reg is a spokeshole for the liberal left? This should be good…
I do believe that this gentleman is trying to trick me into subscribing! Nice try, sir!
Dead cat bounce over: Global rank as of 5/14 is 6947.
We generally keep tabs on Fridays. I’m polishing the “7” key on my keyboard, because I have a strong feeling I’m going to be pressing it first.
goodbye OCRegister… Hello DailyPilot, La Times, Huffington Post, and the MILLIONS of other online news websites that subsidize free online content with the billions of ads STILL USED on OCRegister.com – talk about your corporate double-dipping d0uche b@gs