Rupert Murdoch shakes his fist at news ninjas who avoid his paywall. (Photo Credit: CC BY-ND/Jason Wilson/New Matilda)

If you’re an online news addict with limited funds, the move toward news paywalls could be horrible news. Without information, you could end up choking in the digital dust. Thankfully, there are some tricks you can use to circumvent digital news paywalls and continue to enjoy your daily information fix.

Google News: A news aggregator escape from the paywall

Google News links to news websites across the Web. It’s a great place to get your daily news fix. As it is arranged in a clear, easy-to-digest format with top news, local news and news categories, it’s easy to take care of your digital news jones.

Newspapers app: An iOS portal to publications across the US

For $1.99 in the Apple Apps store, Newspapers is an app that provides users with a directory of links to literally every online newspaper website in the country. Read articles on your iPod, iPhone or iPad in Safari. If you prefer to download a story for later, send it to an app like Instapaper.

Reeder: A smarter RSS reader

RSS feeds are a great way to keep up with the news that’s important to you, and Reeder does it the clean and easy way. It has a newspaper-style interface, and the iOS app cuts the ads and reformats the page for optimal reading pleasure. Get it for your Apple device for only $2.99.

The Zite-geist of iPad news

The free iPad app Zite acts as a kind of “personalized magazine,” says Business Insider. It recommends news you may like, via connections to your Twitter and Google Reader accounts. However, simply picking articles to read from within the app can also drive your customization experience.

Free Associated Press and CNN apps

Mobile apps by the Associated Press and CNN are great iOS and Android options for world, national and local news. Users of the AP app can even choose their favorite local and national broadcasters and follow their stories in print and video. CNN’s app presents streaming video in a polished fashion, and allows users to submit their own photos of news events via the iReport feature.

Jobbing the system: How to obtain free access to NYT and The Daily

Twitter users have been able to create a list of each NYT Twitter feed. Clicking the links via Twitter or blog postings don’t count toward the 20 articles per month limit the Times has imposed, so this amounts to free access. A similar process work with The Daily, which is indexed by the blog The Daily: Indexed.

Peter Kafka of MediaMemo reports that the NYT will limit free referrals via Google to five per day, although using other search engines like Bing may not have the same restrictions – for now.

Why did the Times put up a speed bump for Google? Because users could simply Google an article headline and get into the article without going through the front door, so to speak.

Sources

AP Mobile app
Business Insider
CNN Mobile app (iPhone)
The Daily: Indexed

What to expect with the NYT paywall

The New York Times says, “You Fix the Budget.” (Photo Credit: CC BY-ND/365tshirtdesigns)

President Obama’s bipartisan committee is hard at work on ways to slash the federal deficit. Cutting federal pay and benefits, Bush tax cuts, reducing foreign aid and cutting Social Security are all items on the table. In a novel approach, the New York Times is asking its readers to weigh in via an interactive puzzle. “You Fix the Budget,” says the Times – because Washington will be at it for years to come.

‘You Fix the Budget’ in this ‘Age of Austerity’

Cutting the deficit will require tough decisions; participating in the Times‘ “You Fix the Budget” puzzle is understandably devoid of grief or other unpleasant after-effects. Politicians with a clear view of the federal deficit know that the government must enter an “Age of Austerity,” as some call it. Readers can make the tough decisions without pressure from lobbyists or fear of alienating a constituency. Will the austerity of politicians match the austerity of New York Times readers?

By 2015, the deficit will be $400 billion too large

Economists anticipate a federal deficit in 2015 that will be $400 billion more than can be reasonably sustained. Small deficits can effectively be run forever, as a single year’s economic growth pays for the previous year’s budget shortfall.

But $400 billion is far beyond that level. Experts say that will be more than 2 percent of the nation’s output for 2015 – that’s half the Pentagon’s annual budget plus more than half of the budget for Medicare. On the bright side, writes the Times, $400 billion is still much smaller in context than the deficits with which Greece and Ireland are currently struggling. It’s also smaller than the U.S. federal deficit from 1990 to 1994.

Cutting the deficit: Not politically appealing

The decisions New York Times readers make regarding taxes versus spending – how much taxes should rise, and how much spending should be cut, for example – will “probably be something that is not politically feasible now,” suggests William Gale of the nonprofit public policy organization the Brookings Institution. Voters have tended to favor politicians who speak generally about cutting the deficit, rather than those politicians with specific plans of action.

Sources

New York Times

President Obama says that there's no such thing as "shovel ready" jobs in Washington. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In a recent interview, President Obama said that are is no such things as “shovel ready” jobs. One of the constant criticisms of his administration thus far is the lack of job creation. The president pledged, while he was on the campaign trail, that the government would create jobs . Unemployment has dropped about 1 percent since he took office. Along with opposition to health care reform and Wall Street reform, he has been panned for not creating many jobs.

No such thing as shovel ready

Obama is almost halfway through his first term as president. The stimulus programs he spearheaded were thought to be vehicles toward job creation. Critics on both sides of the political aisle have condemned stimulus programs as wasteful and ineffective. Recently, Obama sat down for an interview with the New York Times. The president addressed the lack of job creation among other issues. He said that it became clear to him once he got to Washington that there were no such thing as shovel ready projects in the public works sector to get people working. Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized many public works projects during the Great Depression to keep people employed.

Obama looks to long term

Obama stresses that his concern has always been to do good over the long term. He, and others quoted in the interview such as David Axelrod, maintain that popular opinion is swayed by the short term. The appearance of a lack of success gets him portrayed as a villain, due to no one being able to focus on benefits that may come from his policies in years to come. Obama says in the interview with Peter Baker that in a democracy like the United States, things always take longer than anticipated, but patience is never regarded as a virtue. The Obama “shovel ready” comments certainly make it seem so.

Wither Washington

In the classic film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” an idealistic man becomes a Congressman, then he is broken by the cynical Washington machine. It is difficult to know whether Barack Obama is falling victim to similar circumstances. Departures of high level staff, such as Rahm Emanuel make it appear he is struggling.

Sources

New York Times

Image from flickr

Christie King Collbran never wanted to become a Scientology defector. In her interviews with The New York Times and The Today Show, she still adamantly insists that she believes in the philosophies of Scientology – but that she and her soon-ex-husband both saw too much to remain in the organization.

Scientology defector breaks her silence to the media

Christine, who was born into a Scientologist family, has been a member of the Church of Scientology her entire life. She and her husband met and were married as Scientologists. While she was very close to her parents, they could not attend the marriage, because they had spent extensive money loans on rising in the ranks of the church. At a very young age, she was recruited for the elite “Sea Organization” – the leadership of the church. After 13 years within SeaOrg, Christine and Chris went through an allegedly harrowing, expensive, and personally dangerous process that took over a year, and they were still labeled as “suppressives” – cut off entirely from friends and family as punishment. That is when they decided to break their silence about defecting from Scientology.

Christine and Chris, Scientology defectors, saw alleged abuses

Christine, the Scientology defector that is breaking her silence claims that both she and her husband worked long days for as little as $17 a week. She also alleges they they both witnessed abuse by Mr. Miscavige, the head of the Church of Scientology. There have been other claims from former Scientologists breaking their silence that have included the same accusation – including physical, as well as emotional abuse from the church leader. The Church of Scientology vehemently denies all of these claims.

Leaving Scientology required silence not be broken

As members of SeaOrg, Christine and Chris were required to sign a contract stating that she would “be a member of the church for a billion years,” based on the belief that church members live forever. When they decided to defect, the Church of Scientology billed them for $90,000 worth of “counseling services.” They were able to negotiate the bill down to “only” $10,000 of cash today. Beyond the bill, both Christine and Chris claim to have spent over a year going through the process to leave SeaOrg – including being asked to sign affidavits they had not written. They “could have just walked away,” but they feared being labeled “suppresives” and cut off from their friends and family. After a very long, frustrating process, Christine and Chris finally decided to get pregnant. This was the ultimate act of defection, because, as the Church admits, members of SeaOrg are not allowed to have children.

Defectors still believe in the tenants of Scientology

In the interviews that broke her silence about the abuses she had witnessed within the Church of Scientology, Christine is very careful to point out that both she and her husband still believe in the philosophy of Scientology. She points out in the Today Show interview that “there is a creed in the church that says all people are free to believe and practice” as they wish. While she breaks her silence, this Scientology defector has also been left with practically no money, no family, and cut off entirely from a church she believes in.

Weaknesses exposed by Scientology defectors?

There are small groups of Scientology defectors around the nation, and they tell a very different story than the Church of Scientology. As Christine says, “There’s a lot of PR to make it look like a successful, expanding organization. I wish that were true, but it’s not.” The New York Times article points out that in the American Religious Identification Survey, that the number of Scientologists in the United States fell from 55,000 in 2001 to 25,000 in 2008. There are also many other high-profile defectors, including Mark Rathbun, one of the former top aides to Mr. Miscavige.

Scientology defector breaks her silence in hopes of change

Like many “Independent Scientologists”, Christine is talking with the media in the hopes of seeing changes within the church that she still believes in. However, those changes do not appear likely to happen within the church anytime soon – the official statement from The Church of Scientology is that Christine is “a liar.” No matter what happens in the church, this Scientology defector has been effectively cut off because she broke her silence.

It’s critical to have emergency money in today’s market, but the New York Times isn’t making it easy. Many avid readers of the New York Times Online are going to be in for a big surprise next year. Mark Zandi, economist for Moody’s Economy.com, said, “The internet is free and more and more people are getting their information directly from it. Gone are the days of paying for a newspaper, except for older generations who don’t have unlimited access to the online news world, or don’t want it.”

The New York Times has long been one of those free news websites, but that is soon to change. Starting next year, the paper is going to be implementing a “metered” system where readers will receive a certain number of news stories for free, but if they want more detailed information they will have to pay. The plan is to draw readers in with interesting articles and then show them the value of learning more about the article’s topic.

Will the plan work?

The big question is whether or not the pay-to-click option will work for The New York Times. They have tried twice before to move to this type of format unsuccessfully. Because of the two failures, executives are taking their time and giving themselves almost a full year to “build the system and figure out the details that are likely to dictate whether the gamble pays off.” The biggest issues are to gauge how much to charge and still keep readers and how many stories consumers will be allowed free access to every month.

Current subscribers to the printed paper don’t have to worry. They will get full-access to the online version with their subscription. The New York Times executives are hoping that this increases the number of print-buyers when they realize that a subscription allows them to read every story online without restriction. Subscribers will also have free access to mobile news, electronic readers and tablet computers for their New York Times content.

Does it make sense for The New York Times?

The question remains if it makes sense for The New York Times to move to this format. It’s still a down economy and most Americans are still prioritizing building their emergency money funds. Will they want to pay for the news when it is so readily available for free elsewhere? The format has worked well for other newspapers like The Financial Times. This is a specialized newspaper that caters to an upper-income set of readers primarily following the stock market, business and the economy while they are on-the-go. Some analysts are questioning whether it makes sense for newspapers that are mainstream to try to follow the same model.

It raises another question on whether or not readers who are turned away by fees will also drive away internet advertisers. Zandi added, “Online newspapers like any other online business get their value by the number of visitors they have… it is possible that The New York Times could lose internet viewers and that would be disastrous for their bottom line in terms of advertising.”

Charging for stories when they are free elsewhere

Finding emergency money in the economy isn’t easy, so charging for stories is an uncertain challenge. According to a study done by ITZ/Belden Interactive, currently about 150 US newspapers charge for internet subscriptions and their fees range from $1 to $35 per month. With a long history of award-winning reliability, The New York Times should be able to gain some online paying customers, but whether or not it will be enough has yet to be seen.

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