Wall St. Journal's new tech news site "run autonomously as a small online startup"

allthingsd.com

1 point·pg··3 comments

Still has a pretty old-media feel to it. If this were a YC startup I'd advise them to get the giant pictures of themselves off the frontpage and put enticing stories there instead.

But it does cure the number 1 problem with the WSJ, which is that you can't read their articles without paying. That alone makes this site newsworthy, because the WSJ were among the last holdouts in that dept. But restricting their articles to subscribers was making them increasingly irrelevant; when was the last time you saw a WSJ article on Reddit or Digg or Slashdot? Now they've decided to work like the rest of the Web.

What next? Will we one day be able to read NYT articles without having to register?

I think they will this year; they recently announced they will 'lower' editorial standards to get their stories on the Internet faster. Right now, their Internet standards are the same as those of the print newspaper, so they are just as slow.

However, there is nothing wrong with charging money and controlling access to your content. Reporters need to be paid. I think the NYT is doing the right thing--likely, waiting until they have their own reddit clone or google news.

Too much clutter. I would rather them drop all the glossy stuff and give me the content I crave. All the pictures I pretty much block out because they remind me of advertising.

That's why I much prefer news.YC and reddit format to NYT; less annoyances.

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