Is it really The End?
Posted Aug 1, 2002 12:06 UTC (Thu) by
DaveK (subscriber, #2531)
Parent article:
Is it really The End?
I have a couple of points to do with subscriptions.
Firstly, on the subject of information not being free if you impose subscription only access to the weekly edition. Thats not strictly true. The information remains free, it is still out there, most of it is in the daily updates (or newswire) pages which remain free.
What a subscription buys is not access to information, but access to the LWN team's expertise, their distillation of the news and what is important, and their editorial style. I'll pay for access to that.
It will always be possible to go and read (trudge through) Kernel Traffic, ZDNet, Freshmeat etc. but for a subscription LWN does this for you, and presents a summary of whats important. Consider it a kind of 'News Distribution' somewhat akin to a Linux distribution, you can build your own from scratch by trawling sourceforge, GNU and metalab, and figure out what is important, or you can subscribe to Slackware, SuSE, RedHat etc. have them do it for you and toss in a few goodies.
On the subject of releasing the weekly edition on Mondays, there is always the danger that for most people it will turn into 'LWN Weekly Edition Published Monday'. For subscription to be a real incentive it needs to be delayed until the following edition is out.
As a suggestion, perhaps the summary that is published on the daily page should contain a little more info about what is in the weekly edition, a sort of teaser to entice people to buy a subscription to read more.
Finally, in a previous comment, someone spoke of getting subscriptions towards $50/year, that is only $4/month or $1/week. A decent print publication (full of corporate advertising) with a simillar technical and editorial level costs at least twice that. I too believe a survey is required to determine how many people will subscribe, and the level of subscriptions people are prepared to pay.
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