I think that even the most casual of readers here will notice that I often parrot the Washington Post. That’s because I read the paper each morning on the web as I lay in bed debating whether I will get up and go to work.
But no more: The Washington Post has decided that their ad-laden website, where articles are split into several pages in order to load even more ads, will henceforth require you to disclose your job title, description of job responsibility, size of your company, industry, e-mail address, password, gender, age, zip code, and home address. Your home address, where they state that they will not promise to send mail.
I think NOT.
Now comes the choice: is buying the paper now cheaper, privacy-wise, then reading it free online?
As an amusing aside, this story appeared on the front page of washingtonpost.com:
E-mail communication to and from The Washington Post was disrupted Thursday after its washpost.com Internet address was shut down because the company failed to renew its $35 annual registration.
The outage did not affect the ability of readers around the world to read the Post’s news Web site, which resides at a separate “domain,” washingtonpost.com. But the newspaper’s journalists and other employees, who rely on e-mail for communication with sources, advertisers and other clients, were without it for part of the day after washpost.com was shut down.
… Champ Mitchell, chief executive of Network Solutions, said that in the past six months the Post was sent “no less than seven” notifications that the registration was about to expire, most of them by e-mail. A manager in the newspaper’s technology division is listed as the contact for the account.
I guess now they have a good excuse for ignoring all the e-mails from the outraged readers reacting to their privacy-busting registration scheme. Sorry, Kat.
Gene,
For all the good it’s going to do, I want you to know that I wrote a scathing letter to the Post protesting the information requirements they now have for subscribing. Here’s the content:
“Dear Washington Post,
I’m a former Washingtonian and am appalled that my city paper has decided to force more private information from its readers. I can get more anonymity from simply buying the paper on the street and I urge all privacy-loving Washingtonians to do the same. The gleaning of so much demographic info from subscribers accomplishes two things: loss of privacy and more dollars for you because of the people you target with your ads. Ads which will soon outstrip any room you have left for articles.
I’m very disappointed to hear that, after all, you’re only in it for the money. The actual news doesn’t count anymore.
Hey, readers – don’t let the Post and other media entities get away with this! When you get online to subscribe, give false information and really mess with the demographics these advertisers so desperately need!
I’d say best regards, but you’d probably charge me for it.
Kathleen “Kat” Furman”
Yeah, like they’ll print this. Let me know if they do, ok?