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Globe and Mail: You're Dead to Me




It was the last straw this morning.
I was already frustrated reading my online edition of the Ottawa Citizen. I had decided to try it out for 99 cents and the truth is, it's so poorly organized I cannot find anything. There's old stuff on the splash page. Half the news is hidden in some cyber cranny that I cannot access. When I went to the obit section, I got a "cannot open" notice.
It used to take me an hour to read the Citizen's Saturday print edition. Now it takes an hour of clicking just to get anything worthwhile to read. I cannot stand it.
So I decided to dump the Citizen's online edition after three days. It's not worth ten bucks. If I want to read a paper, I'll walk over to the Quickie.
So I turned to Twitter, which is now my go-to place for all the really important stuff. There I saw what looked like an interesting story by Ian Brown in the Globe and Mail.
So I clicked on it.
I was immediately alerted to the fact that I'd reached the quota of stories I could read and would have to cough up another 99 cents to get through the new moat erected on the Globe's cybersite.
I knew I'd reached my quota yesterday half way through reading a bland article by Margaret Wente. (I now only click on her column to see if she's committed a firing offence.)
I accept that the Globe has a paywall.
People shouldn't get a newspaper for nothing.
But the paywall should not extend to its promotions on Twitter and Facebook.
It's like a slap in the face to the reader. It's also a slap in the face to the writer.
Hear this Globe and Mail.
Your brilliant marketing approach is a bust.
You're dead to me now.
I'm going to the Huffington Post.
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