You don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
Lyrics © Neil Peart
My son bought a Blackberry Tablet from Curry’s a few weeks ago. Included in the sale was a three month trial subscription for The Times. This was of no use to him so I grabbed the prize. I’m not sure if anyone here is a Times+ subscriber but I’m sure most of the UK Charioteers will have bought a copy of the newspaper at some time.
The package in the deal includes full access to The Times website and a daily downloaded copy of the whole newspaper to your android (I have a simple Acer). There are other bonuses exclusive to Times+ subscribers but I won’t go in to them here.
I’m getting to the main point now; the thrust of the blog, if you like. There seems to be a number of news and magazine sites that are introducing a pay wall or limited access to their home. The new generation don’t have the same liking for paper and some older readers are “genned” up in the digital age which means that producing a paper copy can be unprofitable. I believe the American current affairs magazine Newsweek is available online only. Will there come a day when all newsprint is vanquished?
I hope not, I prefer the paper version. Turning and folding the rustling, creasing pages with big inky fingers, spilling tea on it, drawing moustaches/glasses on random figures and finally, shaping and constructing elaborate paper planes to fire at hostile family members. Great fun these newspapers, one of these days I might get round to reading one.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Happening this side too. I must admit to taking LW’s offered route of clearing the cookies and having them as free as possible. A lot of the NEW York and Boston papers are now like it. I noted that the Boston Globe allowed free access over the couple of weeks of the marathon bombing, they usually charge. Actually the Globe is a good paper.
I don’t think I could be bothered to look at the paper on these ‘small instruments of the devil’, one thing in your dressing gown with morning tea in one’s office, sod it on the bus! I think there is a great difference here between the retired and the still working.
I agree with you on the rustling factor. Here it is not possible to get a paper delivered, too far from town. I miss the experience. Equally I like real books. I like the tactile experience of paper, smell and enjoying a well produced book. Can you imagine Jane Austen on a kindle? No thanks!!!!! Their is something particularly participatory in physically turning the pages of a book.
I too get my daily tot of Telegraph by deleting the history afterwards. Maybe I’ll give the Thunderer another try.
The Times paywall is very good, Janus, by which I mean impossible to penetrate, sadly. I used to enjoy the Times and the Sunday Times, but I resent paying. I occasionally buy the paper copy, just as a treat.
We used to buy the FT too. If you register you have the same deal as the Telegraph, a few free articles a month and then zilch. Deleting cookies, history or whatever, does not make much difference. It doesn’t work.
Forsaking my Luddite tendencies I have got a Kindle. The scroll button makes it quicker to turn the page; I find I read books a lot faster on the device. The downside of the Kindle is that in a history book, for example maps, graphs and family trees are difficult to read on the screen. The paper book wins that contest hands down.
On the smells front, it is delectable smelling a glossy magazine that has just been published. By glossy magazines I mean the sports ones that I buy and not the other kind that I have heard rumours about.
But how do you do the crossword?
On what do you scribble the make up of anagrams?
CO, I would never have taken you for a Jane Austen reader.
RE#5
19/11 down. Stormers knock the Kings out i.e. defeat for a rugby-loving Charioteer. (6)
Sorry folks, like most other things I’m not very good at making cryptic crossword clues.
Tablets are touch screen and by highlighting the relevant crossword box a QWERTY keyboard pops up. From this you can type in the answers. As for scribbling and making notes, the paper wins hands and feet down.
sipu, I have to admit to knowing most of them virtually verbatim.
Plus the Bronte sisters, George Elliot, Mrs Gaskell. Frankly I read very little post Somerset Maugham for entertainment.
Most of the modern stuff is either hand wringingly psychoanalytic or ‘plucky wog’, not my scene at all! I don’t do PC as you may have noticed! Give me Oscar Wilde or Kipling any day!!