Dear Star Tribune,
What are you doing to me? Your RSS feed has no information in it, just a headline. I get it. You want to juice your page views. Instead, I’m just not clicking to your website. Why? I’m already paying for this content. I actually buy the newspaper. Why must you treat me like I’m stealing the content, by refusing to share anything on RSS feeds?
There was a time that the Strib shared two sentences of a story. Then it was one sentence. Now it’s usually nothing. It’s stupid. Grow up. Treat me like an adult.
Maybe think about giving subscribers a full feed. Give me a reason to pay for the paper. I believe in the importance of local news and I’m willing to pay for it. But maybe you need to give subscribers something extra. Don’t make people pay for the website — give a value-add to people who are willing to pay for the paper.
Oh, and this is cute. I went online to renew my subscription. 13 weeks costs $66.69. I thought, I’m going to call up the paper and see if they have a deal. Over the phone, it was more like $33. Are you kidding me? For me to do the work myself, and subscribe online, you’re going to charge me double? Seriously, people, what are you thinking?
