By David Gordon, News Editor
On Wednesday, Newsday.com instituted a "pay for content" policy. I can't necessarily disagree with their doing this, but it isn't really the best thing for them to do, either.
Newsday and I have a long, storied history. In 8th grade, I had a Viewpoints column published and they paid me a whopping $50. That was the most money I'd ever seen. And Newsday was good in my book.
When it was offered free on campus, I'd pick it up daily and scan it, along with The Times.
Ceasing distribution on campus was one of many mistakes Newsday has made in recent memory. The new layout of their site is cold and prohibitive. I often find the site to be impossible to navigate, as well. The addition of a "Newsday.com" status update at the top of the page just struck me as a poor attempt to be hip.
Newsday's bizarre takedown of the University after the incident in September was really the last straw. Prior to then, I checked their Web site (since I couldn't get a hardcopy on campus, anymore) most mornings, along with that of The New York Times, The New York Daily News, the New York Post and Variety (I've gone digital since freshman year when I'd look at the papers over coffee in Bits n Bytes). After reading their extraordinarily negative editorial coverage about how the "Hofstra hoax," as I've taken to calling it, was handled, I stopped looking at Newsday.
The pay policy isn't a dumb move, though. Taking a step to see if people are willing to pay for stuff they can just get other places for free is a bold move on the part of Newsday. What I wonder is whether or not people will actually pay.
I know I won't.
(Ryan Broderick/The Chronicle)