*daily* updates only for subscribers?

Posted Jul 31, 2002 0:23 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

The daily updates typically have a heavy overlap with LinuxToday, Slashdot, and the Register. The real value of LWN is in its in-depth feature articles. If LWN did what you ask, no one would sign up except those who just want to send LWN money for its own sake. It is the weekly edition that many would find worth paying for; it competes with the monthly print magazines (which many folks are happy to pay for), except that it's more timely.

Sometimes a daily update is a pointer to a feature article, but must of them are just links to things that the regurgitator sites will also publish links to.

Also, I would avoid the concept that the subscriber pays for the right not to see ads. This breaks the very successful print magazine model. A good trade magazine knows its subscriber base and recruits the kind of advertising that its subscribers want to see. The key is that the ads should be done in a way that they serve, rather than annoy, the reader. Maybe the subscriber would be able to select the types of ads he/she wishes to see, but "no ads" would not be one of the choices. An RMS-ite might want to avoid ads for proprietary software but be very interested in hardware, consulting, etc while others might have different preferences.