The LA Times website sucks.

I subscribe to the physical newspaper and read it daily. Today I read an article in the paper and wanted to send a link to it my brother.

Going the latimes.com site required me to login, as do many newspaper sites. I resent this, but logged in anyways. I was surprised to find that the article was hidden behind the pay only portion of the site. They wanted me to pay them money to get to a news article on the internet.

You know, fuck that.

It's enough that I pay money for the physical paper. It's enough that I log in to the site. It's enough to endure the relentless ads on the site.

But it's too much to pay for news on the web.

The LA Times people but have their heads buried way up their rear ends. Go check out Yahoo News or Google News. There's no barrier to entry to get the news there.

I eagerly await the day when Yahoo or Google print me a customized newspaper nightly and drop it off at my house, replacing the old school and destined to fail LA Times. If I can get the NY Times at my house every morning before the LA Times arrives, I'm sure there's a place for custom printed newspapers in the near future.

LA Times, wake up or you will find yourself going the way of the typewriter.

Posted by michael at March 23, 2004 09:51 AM