Online media tends to merely report it. Maybe they view the need to promote their own agenda…ie to almost hold up a mirror to the reader as the key to their survival.

Interestingly, big newspaper sites tend to have huge web traffic – some of the biggest sites in the world are newspapers and here in Oregon the Portland paper site is the key Oregon-focused site. However, I don’t think the websites produce much revenue compared to print, so I’d guess these papers are very conflicted about their online/offline operations.

Its possible to view the newspaper’s annoying behavior as a severe restraint on their profits which they imposed on themselves due to a failure to acknowledge changed technology. Newspapers are so used to having their Audit Bureau of Circulation wherein circulation figures of newspapers were certified so advertizers would have facts on which to base decisions and newspaper rankings would have more meaning. It was this carryover of obsolete attitudes into the ‘new online economy’ that made newspapers want to collect such information and made them not realize the self-strangulation they were engaging in.

Often those clicking on a newspaper are greeted by a screen asking for demographic information prior to granting free access. If the newspapers really want to stay in business the first thing is to get rid of those pages.