Will the neanderthal KNS commenters be willing to pay extra to spew their racist, right-wing vitriol on the KNS website?

The comment train wrecks are one of the primary reasons I visit the site

I held off for a long time (primarily because I'm poor these days), but I subscribed to NYT last week (digital subscription) . I really do enjoy it and read it quite a bit, so I need to put my money where my mouse is.

I subscribe to several pay sites. KNS will not be one of them. It's a miserable newspaper.

I'm pretty miserly, as you know, but provided the bundled charge isn't too awfully high I'll continue to participate at the KNS site simply because the issues discussed there relate to my hometown.

There have been times, though, that I felt KNS should be compensating me for my "service."

I will miss Sam Venable, Ina Hughes and David Hunter.....and that's it.

So you think Venable, Hughs and Hunter should write/work for free?

Doesn't Starbucks offer free online access to the NY Times from their stores? Maybe we can get free access to the KNS at participating Chick-fil-a's, or Baptist churches.

I have not yet had the need to pay for an on-line newspaper subscription. If I did, I'm pretty sure it would be the NYT.

The Maryville Daily Times now charges for on-line subscriptions, even for hard-copy subscribers. It's been over a year and I've never felt the need to pay for on-line.

The Orlando Sentinel also charges for on-line content. They give a certain number of views at no charge. I now limit my views. I will not pay for their on-line content either.

The New York Times charges for on-line content. Like the Orlando sentinel, they give a certain number of views at no charge. Again, I now limit my views. I will consider paying for their on-line content.

Will have to wait on the KNS on-line content pricing to know if I'm willing to pay for their content.

Sandra, I always heard that print subscriptions never paid for newspapers, either, that advertising did.

Why, then, are newspapers now trying what appears to be a failed model of relying on subscriptions, rather than just increasing their online ad rates?

I'm not being a smart-aleck, I'm asking. I don't know much about this sort of thing?

Since I have never paid for an online paper, I am curious how much it would cost and whether it would be accessible from all computers in the house and whether one can access it away from the house as well.

If it keeps all the stupid pop up and moving ads from interrupting constantly, that alone may be worth it, along with making all the idiots commenting go away.

It still depends on how much it costs. We no longer get the paper version.

I guess this answers my question about a phone survey the other night. It was a 25 min. questionnaire that finally got around to the KNS. It makes sense now about the questions they asked. I thought it would never end.

It would be nice if credit/debit card transactions weren't cost prohibitive as to allow small transactions.

I'd pay 50 cents to read local stories of interest to me, but not a monthly fee to get a bunch of AP fluff.

Hope they can make it work, but this feels like a dying gasp.

Maybe it's time for Knoxviews to step up to the plate! I'd sooner buy a subscription here than KNS. I fired KNS as my "newspaper" before it was available online. Why would I pay now for an even more inferior product?

Just spitballin' here, but I'd pay to have access to a confederation of independent(ish) news sources like Knoxviews, Metropulse, Shopper News, (even) Journal, etc. long before I'd pay for access to KNS. (I understand that Scripps owns most of the news outlets here, just using these for example).

I've never had the nerve to charge for Shopper-News in any format ... In the early days, when I delivered papers as well as writing and selling ads, I just hoped to make the content interesting enough so that the paper was removed from the box before I showed up the next Monday with another one.

Likewise, I've never had a problem paying people for their work. Pick your poison. You'll either have subscriptions and ads or paywalls and pop-ups or no newspapers at all.

I realize this is a "liberal blog," but goodness. Looks like even you folks would like to pay Ina enough to buy kitty litter. -- s.

Scripps newspapers adopting paywalls

The E. W. Scripps Company (SSP) -NYSE
9.20 -0.22 (-2.34%) 10:47AM EST - Nasdaq Real Time Price

I have subscribed to the KNS for at least 30 years. I do think its quality has gone downhill pretty steadily - especially the Sunday op-ed section (sorry, Scott, I love ya but I DO miss what used to be a long enjoyable Sunday read). The local columnists featured in the last year or so are particularly, umm, uninteresting is a kind word, I guess.

That said, the editorials themselves are MUCH improved since Scott Barker became ed page editor, and the KNS still has some really good reporters (e.g., Donila, Satterfield, Hickman if they'd bring him out of whatever purgatory they've sent him to).

That said, I won't pay for both online and print access. Not sure which one we'll keep (probably the print version since the spouse likes to read it over his morning coffee).

Newspapers have also been obsolete for national and world news for more than a decade new. If you really need top-notch in-depth reporting on it, though, you can spring for a NYT web subscription, which is about the only online subscription I'd be willing to pay for.

Boom. This is what I keep trying to say, if any of you KNS folks are reading this. I think NYT dabbles in reader comments, but not on every article, and it's pretty innocuous wherever it does appear. People now pay to read the NYT because of original content. It's good. It's well-written. It offers depth. It doesn't try to be anything other than plain, old-school journalism. Even the guy who runs one of these blog chatterboard thingies says this has value.

Now, as for all the other sources mentioned for local and state news, yes, a person could go all those places to dig it up, or, if KNS provides original content that's good, well-written and offers depth, readers could just pay a reasonable subscription and go to knoxnews.com to find it all in one place. It's an opportunity, I tell you.

This paywall thing will blow up in McElroy's face like a short fuse firecracker and most Gannett newspapers have chosen other methodology to avoid such charring.

The much balleyhooed pay for "Xtras" for University of Tennessee sports coverages were collosal failures and the quality of the entire News Sentinel journalistic effort continues to spiral downward and out of control.

Asking people to pay for irrelevant, poorly written, barely researched content is like a street corner bum asking for a handout so he can get a cab to Ashe's package store.

Perhaps, if Scripps had been much more focued on journalistic excellence, integrity, and media ethics, they wouldn't find so many of their longstanding newspapers languishing on the shallow reefs of irrelevance. Reporters not asking tough questions, rewriting PR releases from Moxley, Ackermann, and Cohen, looking the other way on obvious public official and elected officials malfeasance, and an editorial "agenda" and "hit list" has a price and it is a price that the knowledgable public will not pay for paywall access in East Tennessee.

There have been a number of solid, ethical, and hard nosed newspaper people at KNS over the years, however,there are none over there now and you'd have a hard time finding anybody over there now that knows the difference between Cas Walker and Johnnie Walker, what happened to the Knoxville City School System, who Knoxville's largest for profit employers really are, and why Knoxville and Knox County continues to employee so many government spokespersons?

Once this "revenue" initiative flops,we'll see Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday publications with the carriers, office staff, and production groups compressed into a five day workweek which will include the weekend days.

Readers will buy a good product, buy a good read, or buy critical analysis and insight, however, they won't pay Sam, Sandra, Ina, or anybody else to write just because they write for a Scripps paper, they'll pay for an excellent product in an already crowded and competitive marketplace that has completely passed Scripps by.