Everyday I check the website of the Pasadena Star-News. And every day, the front section of the website’s homepage is obscured by a pop-up widget urging me to take a survey about the site’s new design. Click the red "X" in the corner to close the widget window, and the op-up appears every time you return to the page. (If you click the button decling to take the survey, the window disappears for the remainder of your session.)
If I register with the LA Times website, the Times insists on spamming me with commercial e-mails for products about which I do not care. If I opt-out of the e-mails, the Times cancels my website registration. (Which is why I don’t have a Times website registration anymore, and read the site via BugMeNot. More about that in a moment.)
And let’s not forget the slew of pop-up, pop-under and screen take-over ads that accompany any visit to more newspaper websites than I am any longer able to count.
Again… ugh.
Yeah, well, publishers owe readers nothing also. There’s nothing wrong with publishers, like readers, acting completely in their own self-interest. For professional publishers, that’s usually going to mean squeezing every possible penny of profit from their operation, even if means doing all the ugly things Niles complains about. I’ve usually put my writing ahead of my economics, but then times get tough like now and I have to put my bottom line ahead of my writing. I hate using a lot of ads and pop-ups but I have to pay the rent. I’ll stop using intrusive ads at the point where they cost me more money than they bring in.
