JSOnline is becoming a paid site (update, reply #73: so is Madison dot com)

[hawing]

I can't believe they are charging people to read garbage like Hunt's column today.

I was going to say I can't believe they are charging people to read garbage like any of Hunt's columns, but then I read today's. Wow.

Ah, but if it's one of the first 20 you read this month, it's free to you.

 

Another update that no one requested: I never got a confirmation from the JS on my subscription attempt which didn't seem to be accepted, or a reply to my email inquiry sent on Monday 1/2, but we did get a Sunday paper delivered this morning. Go figure. So I went to jsonline to sign up and immediately got a "you have reached your 20 article limit" screen - which makes no sense, as I've made a point of not visiting the site since the paywall was established on January 4.

 

I subscribed myself for JS Everywhere and now I can view content. Of course, today's content is mostly stuff I just read in the print edition this morning.

And yeah, I allowed myself an eyeroll when I saw the Michael Hunt column (which, for those of you bypassing the content, encourages Prince to stay just one more year). But I got way more out of the coupon section than I'd gotten from the State Journal's coupons in months and months; and it was nice to have some newsprint in the house again. Plus the print edition has none of those horrible hateful comments that now dog too many corners of the internets.

[NeedMoreFans]

Hawing, your report of great coupons piqued my interest, so I went to JSOnline to see if I was able to subscribe to the Sunday paper. Despite living only 6 miles from you, it is not available to me because I do not live in Madison. It must be very difficult to drive to Middleton...

[umphrey]

The 20 free views system is seriously flawed. The number of views is stored in your cookies, so all you have to do is delete your cookies and the views reset to 0. I expect that the NYTimes will eventually amend the free view model and papers like the JS will eventually follow to discourage users from cheating the system. I have continued to read way more than 20 NYTimes articles/month using this method. JSOnline's problem is that it is virtually unreadable without Adblock. I recently visited JSOnline from a computer without Adblock and I was shocked at the number of annoying ads and popups. I guess that is what happens when you give your product away for free. Once people expect something for free, it is hard to get them to pay for it. Charging $4/month is almost as cheap as free. In comparison, the NYTimes charges $15/month.

 

 

JSOnline has some hilarious security. I remember I used to get a bunch of free content just by stopping a redirect.

[hawing]

Hawing, your report of great coupons piqued my interest, so I went to JSOnline to see if I was able to subscribe to the Sunday paper. Despite living only 6 miles from you, it is not available to me because I do not live in Madison. It must be very difficult to drive to Middleton...

Aww. For what it's worth, I'm frankly a bit surprised that the JS feels it can afford to deliver to our 'hood, given how all the newspapers are going broke or whatever. It would not have seemed a possibility to me if we didn't see it delivered to our neighbor's house.

[dadofandrew]

I clicked on about 15-20 JS articles today and it seemed to not recognize my excessive free reading. Plan JS back to normal may well be working.

[patrickgpe]

i received a message this morning that i only had 15 free articles left this morning, i deleted all of my jsonline cookies to see if that causes the count to reset.

[fondybrewfan]

I ran into my 20 articles last week. This morning I deleted all existing cookies and blocked all future ones. So far I can read anything I want.

[patrickgpe]

I ran into my 20 articles last week. This morning I deleted all existing cookies and blocked all future ones. So far I can read anything I want.

are you using firefox, how do you delete future cookies

 

obviously until jsonline sets up their page like espn insider where you need to log in to see anything, there will be a way around it. problem is that if they do that readership will go down and they will make less in advertising. maybe this was set up to get as much money they can from less than tech savvy people to try to get some money back.

[1992casey]

There are two ways to block cookies from a site in Firefox.

 

Via Firefox's preferences (options):

1. Open Firefox's preference (options) and select the privacy tab. Make sure that "Use custom settings for history" is chosen in the dropdown in the History section.
2. Click on the Exceptions button next to "Accept cookies from sites."
3. Enter "jsonline.com" (no quotes) into the address field and hit the block button.

It's possible that you may have to block both jsonline.com and www.jsonline.com, but I don't think you should have to.

 

Via the site's Page Info window:

1. On any jsonline.com page, right-click on a blank spot on that page and choose View Page Info.
2. Hit the Permissions tab.
3. Under "Set Cookies," uncheck "use default, then choose the "Block" radio button to the right.

fondybrewfan has indicated that blocking cookies works. My concern was that the site could require that you accept a cookie or two in order to be able to view it. That doesn't appear to be the case right now, but that could certainly happen in the future.

[patrickgpe]

thanks

[thebruce44]

My Pulse Reader account continues to pull stories from the Blog RSS feeds without a problem so I can read them offline while on the Chi subway.

[dadofandrew]

I hit my limit tonight. I'm sure I read 40 articles since I installed Cookie Culler, and the 15 articles read warning had just flashed, so it's not accurate, but Culler does not seem to have worked completely either. Should have to restart for it to kick in?

[1992casey]

You should be fine with simply removing your cookies within CookieCuller. I wouldn't think you'd have to restart Firefox. However, CookieCuller does have a setting where it will automatically clear cookies (except the ones you've protected) whenever Firefox starts.

[dadofandrew]

It works now, I went in and told it to clear cookies upon shut down or something like that. I also closed Firefox and opened it, so one of those two did it.

[patrickgpe]

i blocked cookies and got the 15 articles left warning again, not sure how they are counting articles. i have been to more than 5 articles since i cleared cookies and i got the message too.

[umphrey]

If you don't want to install anything or screw around with your cookies you can always just use a proxy server. Just google something like 'free proxy' or 'proxy web browser' and you will find a million websites that let you put in a web address.

[MarquesJohnson2000]

Snow coverage = free!

[1992casey]

Theoretically, if you see the "15 articles left" message and clear cookies, you should see the "15 articles left" message again after reading five more articles. That happened to me yesterday. I believe I did a browser restart during that time, but I don't know if that mattered or not.

[dadofandrew]

I see the 15 articles remaining message every day now.

[thebruce44]

Well the limit thing finally came up for the blog RSS feeds as I am running an app that downloads entire articles for offline reading (I spend a lot of time on the Subway in Chicago). It took me all of 3 minutes to sub out JSOnline's blogs for Brewers/Packers/MU coverage to BrewCrew Ball, Acme Packing Company, and Cracked Sidewalks. Life goes on.

[bjkrautk]

Reading the JS - Newswatch "blog" (which does not, by itself, count against the 20) covers ~80% of the news I would go to JS-Online to read.

http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/

 

 

Congratulations on finding a way to get less ad revenue from me!

[Raw Biz]

I've had the limit thing pop up at the top of my screen saying I have 10, 5, 0 articles left and a thing telling me to subscribe but if I scroll down, all the stuff is still there. I don't really read any articles besides the blog so I don't know if that actually counts or if it's a bug or what. I use Chrome so maybe that is doing something?

[NeedMoreFans]

I saw it announced today that Madison dot com will become a pay site as well. People get 20 free views of "premium" content (which was not spelled out in the article), but must register after 5 views. The cost is $4.95/month, but $1.95 if you already subscribe to the newspaper.

[patrickgpe]

i can't prove this but i think jsonline has stopped being a pay site but just hasn't told anyone. my app nor the online site has not given me an updated on articles in months.

[fondybrewfan]

I changed the cookies at the advice from someone here a long time ago and I have been able to read whatever I want. The top of the webpage still seems to indicate that it is a paid site but who knows.