Not Just Oprah Moving On
Posted on Sunday, 22 of November , 2009 at 7:57 pm
COMMENTARY
By June Maxam, Publisher
North Country Gazette
In an announcement which surprised the entertainment world this week, Oprah Winfrey told her audience that she was ending her show in September, 2011, at the end of her 25th season.
Why she chose to make the announcement now, two years in advance of the curtain, is rather puzzling. She said it was after many prayers and much thought, because 25 years felt right in her bones and in her spirit.
We know just what she means. It’s not just Oprah who thinks it’s time to move on.
How ironic that Oprah chose this week to make her announcement as we too have been pondering the future for some time, giving much thought to the future of The North Country Gazette.
As our close friends know, for some time we have been considering ending The North Country Gazette at the end of December, next month. The North Country Gazette is now in its 28th year, the last five of which have entailed daily online news production. It’s a lot of commitment, a lot of work, mostly uncompensated and leaves little or no time for other things.
The acceptance of The North Country Gazette has been phenomenal and rewarding, reaching millions of readers. And many, many times, NCG has been the ONLY media to report certain subjects and issues, presenting many exclusive reports.
Unfortunately unlike Oprah, part of our consideration has been the number of hours needed to produce NCG and the lack of income realized. It’s a lot of work for one person. Unfortunately, the majority of visitors believe that they should have total free access 24/7. Some even go so far as to take our work for themselves and like Zimbio.com, pirate our exclusive work for their own profit, using our work to sell advertising for themselves. They have a 100% profit margin as it costs them nothing to steal other people’s work. Their whole operation seems to be premised on taking the intellectual property of others for nothing.
It frankly amazes us at the obstinateness of people who apparently think that the subscription notice on the end of the articles doesn’t apply to them, that they can stay on the site for as long as they like and help themselves to as much as they like for nothing. And then they can’t understand when they no longer have access to the site, why they are getting a 403 forbidden notice. Some of them try to return, day after day, apparently thinking that the site is down. Apparently it never occurs to them that they have been blocked because they overstayed their welcome. They refuse to patronize our affiliate advertisers or even make a $10 donation to help support the site. The free ride is over.
It also amazes us how many people in government spend their day surfing the internet at taxpayer expense and then complain when their access is denied. Perhaps government should start weeding out these people, get them off the payroll and help reduce the deficits facing state, county and local governments. Either they aren’t doing the job they are paid to do, or they don’t have enough to do and so therefore, their job could be eliminated. Either way, their job performance and how they spend their eight hour work day needs to be reviewed.
Rather than place the entire North Country Gazette website into a members only situation, we have left it open with a notice that first time visitors are welcome to read one article but thereafter, a subscription is needed to read additional articles or for return visits. Over the past weeks, we have seen individuals who have parked on the website for an hour or more and read 55 to 60 articles at a sitting.
More and more news sites are becoming accessible solely by subscription. Many others only print some news online and save the rest for their print edition or online edition which you have to buy. Many make the news items accessible for seven days only and thereafter, you must pay $2.95 or more PER article to read. For example, the St. Petersburg Times charges a whopping $3.95 per article in their archives, regardless of the length.
Or, you can purchase a 24-hour pass for $9.95 that entitles you to read four articles. For $199.95, you can buy an annual pass to the St. Petersburg Times which allows you to read 400 articles, about one a day.
The North Country Gazette currently has over 15,000 articles in its archives and with the exception of some password protected feature articles, all are currently offered for free. Thousands of people every day access those NCG articles without a subscription, without making a donation to help us pay expenses, to help maintain the website or help in the costs of newsgathering—the Freedom of Information Law requests, the subscriptions that we have to pay to such services as PACER, Westlaw and the various court system records such as Pinellas County which is $60 a year even if we don’t read any documents.
Subscriptions to The North Country Gazette are only $39.95 per year which gives a subscriber total access to our website, all the password protected features, all the archives, all the daily news, delivered directly to your inbox every day.
Unfortunately, because we don’t shy away from controversial subjects, because we report on public corruption, many advertisers don’t want to have their ad placed next to a controversial article although that’s foolish because that’s where the most readers will see it. But, that’s why many news organizations won’t take on the controversial subjects, why they steer away from investigative reporting. Not only does such reporting take a lot of time and extra expense but advertisers do not want to support it. Advertisers would rather have their ad next to the good news, the spoon fed drivel that many newspapers deliver in trying to make you think that government is good and honest and working in your best interest rather than their own.
Investigative reporting is the meat of a news organization but unfortunately, because of the costs and sometime resulting fallout such as government agencies refusing to be cooperative with FOIL requests or in providing news releases because they didn’t like their abuses being spotlighted, fewer and fewer news organizations are undertaking investigative journalism. That’s dangerous.
Due to the overwhelming number of cases involved with governmental abuse upon citizens and the size of our organization, we must scrutinize each inquiry received and can only become involved in a few.
While we do our best to expose corruption, we regret that we are unable to report or expose each individual case that involves you being abused by the system. We encourage you to communicate with us, but ask that you keep in mind we may or may not be able to report every case.
Should you desire your case being exposed, we will review your situation for free. To investigate your situation/abuse further, involves an enormous amount of investigative work for which we will be happy to complete for a fee.
All in all, we’re experiencing a case of burnout. We’re tired of the long days with little compensation, tired of the piracy and most of all, tired of not having the time to do other projects. We need more time to finish our book on the Ethan Allen boating tragedy, to write a book on our experiences with the criminal justice system, Warren County politics and how government retaliates against a journalist they can’t control, how the system really works.
Also underway is a book about the Pinellas County, Florida cases of Jimmy Spicer, Joey Turner, Shawn McMillan and Heather Whalley/Aaron Rimar and state attorney Bernie McCabe And then there’s the book we’ve long wanted to write about the Terri Schiavo case.
For the past 28 years, and in particular the last five, we have informed you, educated you, entertained you, and in some cases, angered and infuriated you. We have tried to make you think, to see the other side in many issues. We have tried to give you a different perspective on some issues and spotlight many issues that the mainstream media either ignore or taint with misinformation.
In the time that’s left, we have several investigative reports we’ll be presenting and we invite you to submit your comments and news tips. If of course some benefactor should come forward to help financially support the website or should a wealth of subscribers and advertisers suddenly appear, we’d consider continuing The North Country Gazette.
But in the absence of that, it’s time we moved on to other things and other venues. We hope you’ll stay with us until we sign off. 11-22-09
Category: Business, Consumers, Entertainment, First Amendment, Government, Internet, Media, New York State, Opinion, Police, Politics, Schiavo, Warren County
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COPYRIGHT 2009 - NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of the publisher.
