the wiener is you.

This sounds like another scammer:

Hello,


I am glad it is still available for sale.I am very much interested in buying your item and i am ok with the price. I am only able to make payment by money order at this time b/c i am away on assignment. Please provide me with your name , address and phone number for payment. It will take about 7days for payment to get to you. As per pick-up, I will make arrangement for the pick-up after payment has been received by you. I don't mind adding thirty dollars so you can keep it in my favor.Please take the posting off craigslist today and consider it sold to me. Thanks
Expecting to hear from you soon.


Regards

******************************

Considering the item is in storage, I will not be providing my name, address and phone number.

Newsday as has been reported is going to a subscription-only site proving that newspapers still don't understand how the internet works or even that they continue the same path they've been on they will become the next 8-track tape industry (well except that they may get taxpayer bailouts).

None of this is new. What made me laugh is this idiotic response from the paper:


For 19 years people have insisted on free product. For 19 years people have refused attempts to charge them for information freely available. Yet somehow the paper is convinced that those 19 years were nothing but an error in judgment that the people really did want to pay?

How many years does it take before you start to think that the customer has spoken?

Also, people may very well be willing to pay for information they feel is useful to them - provided that they can't get the same information for free.

I'd take that argument one step further...Provided the customer KNOWS the information is going to be useful in advance of payment. I KNOW a thesaurus will be useful. Even though I can find a free one available online, I'm willing to pay for one because I have increased utility (looking up a word during a power outage, make notes in the margin, paper weight, throw it at someone, door stop, etc.) The day-to-day newspapers often don't provide anything more than local gossip, so 'useful' is often not an accurate definition.

*waits for lynxears to comment* ;)

Well, what do you want me to say?

It's a mistake. Anyone who understands media should see it clearly... newspapers could make money through online subscriptions IF (and only if) the AP (and to an extent Reuters) stop being the news whores and giving it away for free (which, btw, it's only free to viewers. Yahoo and Google and the newspapers all pay AP... they have no incentive to stop being freely available online).

Personally, if I were picking, the news media would go to an NPR model: funded by public donations and private foundations. The news is a public trust, and is only hurt by having to pimp to a public audience that doesn't realise how much it costs to get that story you read for less than a minute (answer: LOTS).

There are people here who find no joy in pointing out contradictions in other people's comments but still feel it is their duty to do so. You would just get a couple of "Do we have contradiction? Yes we do!" comments, and then again a month later when someone new reads the thread, and every now and then over and over again your nose would be rubbed into it until the thread died, but when it gets resurrected 2 years later someone would surely point out: I know. I tried it. Feel free to experiment on your own with peeing on the electric fence if you want to though.

It wouldn't just be merely contradiction. The comments would be the total opposite of each other. How could anyone not see that I would be doing it on purpose?

You (perhaps unwittingly) have the answer here. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al pay out good money to replicate the stories on their websites. They don't do this because they have a desperate desire to keep the news flowing freely on the internet but because they can make more money than they spend by hosting this news.

Theirs is the workable model. Theirs is the model that news agencies should be looking at.

They aren't primarily news-gathering/dispensing organizations. They don't care if the news is OMG Britney! or in-depth political coverage (one is cheap and one is expensive but needed).

It's not a working model; they can buy the news regardless of whether people read it or not. They sell other things, too. News just sells itself.

Interesting response. Either you're not understanding what I'm saying or your position within the the world of reportage has resulted in you adopting the same blinkering of vision that blights many other such organisations.

It is a working model. It's not a loss leader. Further, it's the print model transplanted pretty much wholesale to the internet. It just involves the internet and so seems alien.

I'm not understanding, then.

Google/Yahoo/etc. pay a flat rate for the news...no matter how much it cost to make. Fluff news and in-depth stuff is the same to them.

But in terms of producing the content, it is very different.

My point is that Google/Yahoo don't sell news; both get money from the advertising from, mostly, searching. Newspapers/TV/radio don't have that... they try to sell news. So there's a difference in what they can offer.

Forget Google/Yahoo/etc as entities. They're the mechanism, not the final product.

The mechanism does sell news. Just because it's free at the point of delivery doesn't mean it isn't sold. Some the most successful paper newspapers in the UK are given away free and yet still make very healthy profits.

You may argue that the content in the free papers is not in depth journalism, but like in every field that falls into the category of media, the populist sections turn the profit that in turn pays for the more specialist, less commercial corners of that field - in this case in the form of conventional printed media.

I think we're talking at crosspoints.

I would never say that free papers (free to the audience, that is) aren't profitable, or aren't in-depth. On the contrary, those that are free have a greater audience and support a wider advertising base (generally. If they don't, they fold).

Free papers have to work harder to be interesting, to maintain the advertising (though all papers do) so sometimes they feature great reporting.

The turning point we're at now is that ALL papers are losing advertising revenue... readership is actually expanding (though not necessarily in print form). ALL are losing advertisers, as they lose out to competitive media (TV/Internet) and advertisers lose money in the global recession. The advertising they are losing, particularly classifieds, the main moneymaker, are going to free/cheap online sites like Facebook and Craigslist.

The actual cost of the print paper is inconsequential. That's not where the money is. The money, you are saying, is in online advertising. That is one-tenth of the funds they formerly had.. they've taken a huge hit, and the money is not reappearing other places. THAT is the problem.
Some papers are trying to fill the gap by charging for the online subscription... I fervently believe in a widely-available media and really don't think it will work that way.

But no one else cares about this discussion. Let's continue it in PMs if you want.

Oh uh... don't take a nap when you have a frozen pizza in the oven.

In related news, pizza crackers aren't SO bad. Just really crispy.

In other news, yes I am driving to Miami in this mental state. Go Go Gadget Redbull shots!

I care.


Keep going.

Arguing with Pock makes me self-conscious. What are you interested in, exactly?

Well... now I'm interested in why arguing with pock would make you self-conscious.

Because he likes to be right.

And so do I. ;)

And having a two-person discussion online is less like a conversation and more like a mini-play.

I'd say it's more like watching chess....

Wizard's Chess?

Because if not, that's still pretty boring.