Fri
Apr 14 2006
07:07 am
Knoxville News Sentinel no longer requires registration?
By: R. Neal

Per Justin in comments below, it appears the Knoxville News Sentinel website no longer requires registration to access/read news articles. I just tried it by logging out and deleting all my Knoxnews cookies, and it appears you are able to access articles without being registered.

There's no official announcement or any mention at Michael Silence or on McElroy's blog. I'll try to get confirmation. Hopefully it's a permanent change. If so, the KNS has made a smart decision.

UPDATE: The KNS is apparently declining any official response or announcement. Instead, I was directed to this. I suspected it might be some kind of experiment or trial run, because they were being so quiet about it.

I can sort of see not wanting to make a big deal about it for fear of admitting a mistake or seeming to back down in the face of complaints from, you know, readers. And I can see why they might want people to think they still need to register so they get more names in their database. But if you don't tell anybody about a change, how can you measure the effect of the change? And why wouldn't you want to promote the fact that you made a positive change based on reader feedback? Weird. Anyway, I hope their experiment works and this remains a permanent change. Bloggers can help by linking to lots of articles at KNS.

UPDATE: Michael Silence got an official response from the General Manager of Interactive Media for Scripps.

Topics:
Justin's picture

I always wonder why some

Submitted by Justin on Fri, 2006/04/14 - 7:39am.

I always wonder why some sites even bother. I dont know anyone who actually gives a web site their real personal information. Anyone else use Mozilla w/the bugmenot extension?

Anonymous's picture

Anyone else use Mozilla

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2006/04/14 - 8:40am.

Anyone else use Mozilla w/the bugmenot extension?

Sure do.

Old Hickory's picture

Does anybody actually pay to read sports online?

Submitted by Old Hickory (not verified) on Fri, 2006/04/14 - 8:55am.

The KNS rag is the only newspaper in the state of tennessee that requires you to pay monthly to read GoVolsExtra, which is nothing more than ongoing amateurish sportswriting, lightyears behind the sports departments of the Tennessee and the Times Free Press in Chattanooga.  I can't think of another paper that has such little credibility and little relevance in a medium sized city like Knoxville.  The Memphis paper which is also owned by KNS parent Scripps Howard is much more well written and well edited that the KNS really looks like a journalism school experiment as to how not to run a newspaper and build credibility in a community.  So far this year, I've received 5 free Sunday editions while they attempt to pump up declining circulation figures.

jack lail's picture

Registration evolution at Scripps sites

Submitted by jack lail (not verified) on Thu, 2006/04/20 - 7:13pm.

This is probably the detailed explanation of the registration experiments that R. Neal (and others noticed).

This was posted by Jay Small, who lives in Knoxville and is E.W. Scripps' Director of Online Audience and Operations, Interactive Newspapers.

http://smallinitiatives.com/2006/04/19/registration-evolution-at-scripps-sites/

Eleanor A's picture

You can get a bugmenot

Submitted by Eleanor A on Fri, 2006/04/21 - 8:47am.

for Mozilla???? How? Where?

For the most part, I'm "Gern Blanston" from "Pleasantville, Iowa" on websites. Oh, and I'm an 85 year old male software engineer.

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