Wow. I guess I'll just become a little more disconnected to my home town. Or just visit ESPN Dallas more. I don't know if I can read BBTiA any more than I already do. It's an addiction, I tell you.

I want to pay to support journalism, but 16.95 a month is much too high. I won't pay it, and I suspect I'll hardly be alone.

The Newspaper industry is a sinking ship.

Who needs baseball, football or basketball insight from newspapers when local team blogs seem to provide a better insight now a days than the rantings of columnist who think their writing is engaging, when mostly it's not.

Plus BBTIA.com is the only Rangers info sight that I read (and LSB from time to time.)
So screw DMN, they'll be going the way of the dodo along with most newspapers in the next decade.

No, K-Mart. Columnists aside, you can't have any of what you have here at BBTIA with out solid, accurate reporting, and that takes money. This whole thing dies without the facts dug up by Andro, Sulivan, Grant, Durrett, and the rest. Those hard working people can't work without pay, and increasingly they are having to rely on new media like ESPN.com and mlb.com. Not because Belo and the like can't survive, but because they can't survive with management that makes blunders like these. Good lord, 16.95?!? They will be as big a joke with the public as they are with their creditors.

@badspellr

Money makes the world go round, I get it. It's just that charging 16.95 for ''Premium'' local news is a joke.

Hee, hee...you said erecting.

$34 a month. $34. Every month. $34. Really?

I had the DMN delivered to my door daily for many years, from about 1992 into the mid-2000s. It was like $10 a month and gradually went up a little bit. This seems like an awful big jump in price when they are competing against news sources that are much, much cheaper or free to consume.

$34. Thirty. Four. Dollars. a month.

Good luck with that.

Nobody under the age of 50 wants a newspaper hitting the front stoop daily. I'm pissed when the mailman brings me something. This is the Age of Broadband, folks! It's exponentially cheaper to produce ideas than to distribute them in any type of physical form.

Die already, you dinosaurs! You Dodo birds! The comet slammed into earth in 1992, and your place on this planet has been inherited by a new species...one that can communicate to our Universe without paper, without ink, without currency.

No, K-Mart. Columnists aside, you can't have any of what you have here at BBTIA with out solid, accurate reporting, and that takes money. This whole thing dies without the facts dug up by Andro, Sulivan, Grant, Durrett, and the rest

No objections there. Now, you can obviously still craft interesting game stories without leaning on the press (I can recall writing numerous posts on games that relied little upon the beats, or not at all), but what we do is contingent upon those bearers of information to a remarkable degree.

That said, $17/mo. for the "privilege" of reading locally produced stories that are far too often unexceptional is destined to fail ... it's not as though you're getting unique content for your money most of the time, given the presence of the FWST, the Observer, and other outlets. And the DMN's sports section is brutal, for the most part ... Evan is the best beat guy in the market, but seems to have been forced into the realm of analysis by the content-sharing arrangement with the FWST, which has its problems. JJT is awful. Cowlishaw's only slightly better. Sherrington's the best of the bunch, but is still hit-and-miss.

Perhaps this would have a chance to succeed if the cost was more along the lines of $20/year, but I'm not sure how anyone could justify $200/year, and I'm betting this experiment fails much the same way the NYT's aggressive attempt to monetize its online content failed several years ago.

@ dude in uk

I'll have to admit I'm an older guy, not quite 50 but close. I have a newspaper delivered to my house every day. I'm a huge consumer of on-line media, too. But having a newspaper delivered to your door gives you the opportunity to read something completely random, unintentional and hopefully interesting. To me, it's like paying 60 cents to take your mind places it never intended to go. A brief mental Walter Mitty adventure during the routine of my regular day. I usually love the human interest stories. Someone once said the joy in life isn't when the expected happens, it's when the unexpected happens and how you deal with it. Getting a newspaper gives me the chance to read something unexpected. So call me a do do bird, a geezer, an old timer, whatver, and I'll laugh along with you. But I like a newspaper.

But I won't pay $16.95 a month for "premium" on-line content. Even from my former hometown newspaper. And I'm a fan of Grant and Sefko (I'm a Mav fan, too).

What about the FWST? A lot of the "DMN" Rangers coverage already comes from there.

They might be announcing 17 to later take it down to 7, you always negotiate for something you know you cant get.

Or they could just be ready to go under so they are desperate.

The winner with this decision is Richard Durrett. He writes good stuff, and he is constantly sharing tidbits as he gets them. Add in the fact that ESPN radio has the Rangers broadcasts now and I think the Rangers fan base will be reliant upon ESPNDallas for our team news.

Agree with you, Tre.

This is the end of baseball reporting at DMN. I'd expect Evan to find a new full time home. The rest of the guys are filler material.

Im just glad we can all turn to the internet for free content forever. right?

This is the end of baseball reporting at DMN. I'd expect Evan to find a new full time home. The rest of the guys are filler material.

That's interesting, because just barely over a year ago, Evan left D Magazine as the head blogger for Inside Corner, to come back to the DMN. Richard Durrett over at ESPN is going to get a huge spike in viewership, however I assume that he already gets a lot of views for the wonderful analysis he writes.

It makes me wonder if BBTIA will ever give-in to 'The Man' and start charging for content. Mike Fisher over at Dallasbasketball.com is starting to charge 3.33/mo for premium content. So, I bet soon local/underground sports websites will start charging for their content as well.

Am an avid, daily reader of BBTIA and ESPN Dallas from my perch in Wichita, thus the DMN news doesn't change my reading habits. But, DMN's decision is a horrible business model which, as Joey correctly points out, didn't work at the NYT. Only the Wall St Journal found a way to make a pay wall successful, but they have value added content also free. Only question ... how well does ESPNs pay wall (the Insider) perform?? You pay far less per month than the DMN proposes, but access to Buster Olney and others is still worth $$$. In the end, Joey and Richard Durrett win! Both write exceptional columns and add tremendous value with their insights about the Rangers, feeding my never ending hunger for conversation on a team I've followed since 1972. I wish Evan Grant well, however, as his contacts and writing skills will be missed by those not willing to pay $17/mo to read them!! Hail to BBTIA and its team of baseball pundits, including those like Mike Hindman and others who also contribute.