Citizen Website

[dmjr]

I just logged on to the Citizen website and I still see headlines from last week. Are they only doing limited updates?

[winniplayhouse]

If you go to the Entertainment section, the top story is from April!!

[upthesaukee]

A great movie...but that 's a whole different story.

A while back, I think I saw an article on the Citizen website where they are doing the Sunday Citizen on Saturday as a weekend (?) Citizen. As such, they would not be updating the website on Sunday.

I read the Daily Sun and then the Citizen. Then I read the Concord Monitor and the Union Leader. Then I glance at WMUR (yuck). Then I check the three stories I want to read in Fosters. About that time, I figure I have the NH news down fairly well. Phew!

[NHBoat70]

The Citizen just switched over to a new format which is much more easy to access and the ENTIRE paper is online. This will be free for only a few more weeks, then it looks like they plan on charging for access.

[fatlazyless]

Why doesn't The Citizen just eliminate the paper edition all-together and just go with a paid website edition. It would eliminate the one time use of wood pulp and newspaper print paper, transportation of pulp and paper, and newspaper delivery. Instead of paying 50-cents for a single daily newspaper, readers would probably be happy to pay say $1.00 for a five day ($2.50) internet editon, and 50-cents for the ($1.00) weekend edition. Probably sell a lot more internet subscriptions and have better readership numbers to present to their advertising customers.


It only makes so much cents!

[belly_button_biter]

Originally Posted by NHBoat70

The Citizen just switched over to a new format which is much more easy to access and the ENTIRE paper is online. This will be free for only a few more weeks, then it looks like they plan on charging for access.

I don't use the website for free. I guess if I had to pay for it I'd make it a point to visit more often.

[dmjr]

I just saw that the Citizen is going to now charge $90.00 a year. I feel that fee is a ripoff, I guess it is cheaper to go spend the $.50 for a paper. Personally I think it is a bad move on the Citizens part!

[WINNOCTURN]

It used to be a good paper to read and the website was a mirror of that day's paper.

I can read the present paper cover to cover in about four minutes. Check the number of Classifieds (JOBS), on a good day there may be four or five adds. The website has NEVER had a "JOBS" page since the new owners took over. Don't "THEY" say a paper lives and dies by the advertising? This one may be DOA. I do not think I would pay $90.00 for ether the paper or the website.

Oh how about the Week End addition? Started out at a cost of $2.75 a copy for what was Friday's news and some Fliers. It only took several weeks before they dropped it back to $1.50.

Pound for pound I go with the "FREE" Laconia Daily Sun. Add the WEIRS Times to my list.

[magicrobotmonkey]

I would have a very hard time justifying $90/year to read that paper online, especially considering they only have a few local stories a day, and the free Sun covers the same stuff for the most part. There is absolutely no value to the AP stories they post on there as you can get the same stories elsewhere on the internet for free. I think more local papers should go the route of the Salmon Press papers and do ALL local news, with no national stories that proliferate everywhere else.

[upthesaukee]

They are not alone in charging for on-line news. Foster's Daily Democrat allows 3 free reads per day, Concord Monitor is hit and miss whether you can read a particular article or not, Boston Globe: you cannot even check out the obituaries without a subscription, just to name a few.

In all three of these, the rationale put out by the publishers is that paper edition circulation has gone down with the readiness of online editions, and that those who do not have computers should not be penalized by having to pay for the paper where the online was free.

While I enjoy "reading the newspapers" over my morning coffee, I do understand the need for subscriptions. Eventually, I will have to decide which paper(s) I want to subscribe to, based on content and cost. In the short term, it will be LDS and some others that remain free.

The internet is free once you get connected, it is the content on the internet that may or may not be free.

[baygo]

When we get our news from paper; it's expensive, it's outdated, it's a single sided view we get. We can save our trees for the birds and the bees when we get news from the Internet.

winnipesaukee.com is the best place to get local news that I've found.

[secondcurve]

Originally Posted by upthesaukee

They are not alone in charging for on-line news. Foster's Daily Democrat allows 3 free reads per day, Concord Monitor is hit and miss whether you can read a particular article or not, Boston Globe: you cannot even check out the obituaries without a subscription, just to name a few.

In all three of these, the rationale put out by the publishers is that paper edition circulation has gone down with the readiness of online editions, and that those who do not have computers should not be penalized by having to pay for the paper where the online was free.

While I enjoy "reading the newspapers" over my morning coffee, I do understand the need for subscriptions. Eventually, I will have to decide which paper(s) I want to subscribe to, based on content and cost. In the short term, it will be LDS and some others that remain free.

The internet is free once you get connected, it is the content on the internet that may or may not be free.

Upthesaukee:

The Boston Globe's website is a bit confusing but there is a free component to it which includes the Obituaries. Click on Boston.com and when the website pops up go to the top left hand conner, then instead of clicking "today's paper" click the "news" button just to the right of "today's paper". This will bring up a number of articles/sections of the paper that are free including the Obituaries. Good Luck.

Another trick that I have learned is that if you go to a website that requires a subscription, you can often circumvent this requirement by typing the exact title of the article and the name of the paper in Goggle and the single article will be accessible in search results. I often do this with Barrons. The only paper that this feature doesn't seem to work on is the Boston Globe.

[secondcurve]

Originally Posted by WINNOCTURN

It used to be a good paper to read and the website was a mirror of that day's paper.

I can read the present paper cover to cover in about four minutes. Check the number of Classifieds (JOBS), on a good day there may be four or five adds. The website has NEVER had a "JOBS" page since the new owners took over. Don't "THEY" say a paper lives and dies by the advertising? This one may be DOA. I do not think I would pay $90.00 for ether the paper or the website.

Oh how about the Week End addition? Started out at a cost of $2.75 a copy for what was Friday's news and some Fliers. It only took several weeks before they dropped it back to $1.50.

Pound for pound I go with the "FREE" Laconia Daily Sun. Add the WEIRS Times to my list.

I'm sure the Citizens paper would love to get paying job advertisements but advertisers don't put job ads in papers any longer since it is more effective for them to advertise on various sites on the web, including this one! It is a difficult problem for the papers and it is the reason they are often charging for online access. It is a simple rule of economics that someone has to pay for the service that is delivered by a paper and since ad revenues are no longer carrying the freight it has to be the subscribers.

[fatlazyless]

....maybe once a week I pay 50-cents, like on a Thursday which is usually a bigger news day, for a newsprint www.Citizen.com from a machine so's I can read it in the outdoor hot tub in between gazing out at the frozen lake or looking at my footsies.........just try doing that w/ an expensive i-pad.......but mostly I just gave up on it on the internet.....and look at www.laconiadailysun.com or.....www.conwaydailysun.com .....which are free reads.......holy smokes......aaarrrrggggghhhhhh!


...say hey.....for an interesting read about the 2012 non-winter, suggest you go to page 3 of the Conway Daily Sun and read "Chamber to cancel everything but summer." It'a a humor piece.....at least, me-thinks it's a piece designed to be funny?

[BroadHopper]

So, you have to pay to read a person's obit? Talk about robbing the dead!

[upthesaukee]

I begrudgingly agree to the fact that it is not profitable to put the paper online at no cost to the reader.

However, to have to subscribe just to read the obits is just a bit much. It should not be that difficult to allow you to read obits.

The only other option I can think of is to look at the funeral home(s) in the town and see if you can find the obit through them.

Foster's went subscription but initially allowed you to read 3 items per day, and the obits were not included in that. Now I can read the obits ok, but no more free items per day.

[belly_button_biter]

Let's build an obit section here. webmaster please give us a link.

[fatlazyless]

If you are looking for obits......then go take a gander at the www.berlindailysun.com which seemingly is nothing but obits.......talk about a really dead town.....Berlin, NH!