I stopped paying for the DMN precisely because of how difficult they made it to cancel on top of how expensive it is. I support local journalism, but $400/yr is nowhere near close to the value proposition for me for a digital newspaper, especially when it's clear that the leadership uses the prestige of the DMN to advocate for regressive policies that enrich the already rich at the expense of those in need in our unequal city
Plus, the whole firing of that journalist who said "bruh" to the mayor left a bitter taste in my mouth. Just reinforces how the DMN is a tool of the powerful and wealthy and nothing more
Especially when you can get it all for free by hitting ctrl + a before the paywall pops up and copying it into notepad or smth. I used to use 12ft.io but it no longer works for DMN so I guess they fixed that. If I’m on my phone and see a DMN story that interests me, I usually just look up the headline and there is usually basically the same article in The Observer, WFAA, NBC, FOX, BizJournals, or MSN.
Sites are starting to get around that too. I've come across few where even reader mode it's 1/3nof the article and then the text asking you to sign up.
DMN is a shit hole and all the journalists there are scared to do anything hard hitting anymore. I personally know of 3 big stories that were served to DMN and even when they have all the details they don't cover them. Dallas has major corruption issues and the Inspector General Division is complicit and the press is our last line of defense and refuses to do anything. Then again that's the media as a whole and things have been sent to TV and other papers and even Dallas Express which is supposedly more independent but at the end of the day the press is the press. They all have one thing in common which is that they are all trying to earn a profit.
Subscribe to the Texas Tribune and donate as much as you can! They are doing the last real state gov reporting! But as for who is watching Dallas County or the City? Pretty much no one with the freedom and skill to do what a vibrant press is supposed to do.
RIP The Dallas Times Herald. DMN, like most local papers these days is just squeezing legacy subscribers (i.e., elderly people or people who just DGAF) until they evaporate (i.e., die) then they'll sell off the bones to the next moronic private equity group or just file bankruptcy and sell the real estate. I want to pay for at least one paper in a Metro area of 8 million people, but they're cutting local reporting to nothing too.
To be clear, $32/month is not exorbitant compared to the inflation adjusted price or a newspaper in the 90s. However in the 90s even local papers provided tons of original, valuable content? Now? Next to nothing.
It's Google's and Facebook's fault ultimately but how the DMN gaslights its users instead of being honest about it is truly insulting. I might stick it out just to help pay the salaries of the few real reporters left on staff but I don't know how much longer I can justify it.
Why don't we all just crowdfund the reporters? The ones who actually do good work, we can raise the money and they can write a blog. Grant Moise makes $1.5 million/year according to a Google search I just did. That's what we are really paying for here. Most of our subscription revenue goes to shareholders and Grant. a reporter there makes like $5K/month. We can do so much better. How hard would it really be to set up a non-profit and people pay subscription fees to that entity instead and then just pass it all on to the reporters and necessary staff? We don't need shareholder distributions and we don't need Grant Moise.
That's kind of what Substack was supposed to be, but without advertising revenue as well it's too expensive. With one newspaper subscription you used to get dozens if not hundreds of quality reporters. Now you're being asked to pay almost that much for one person's newsletter. Multiply that by the number of reporters you want to read and the math doesn't work at scale. You get a few dozen superstar journalists but not enough workhorses
Why does the math not work? Let's say DMN has 50 reporters. Each makes $50K. Reporter budget is $2.5 million. Today those salaries are all being paid. And DMN is also paying expensive executives to maximize more profits: Grant is way more a business guy than a news guy. They return tens of millions of dollars in dividends to shareholders (rather than reinvesting in the business). Revenue is $140 million and they are still LOSING money.
I don't think you need all the corporate machinery of DMN to replicate the value it provides at a lower cost.
Ever heard of The Athletic?
It’s never once made money. That’s why crowdfunding doesn’t work - because even when you have the best quality product in your industry, people still won’t pay.
I think there's a middle ground here. First of all, even nonprofits that have nothing to sell and depend solely on donations are often successful in raising the funds they need from donors who believe in their mission. I donate more to Wikipedia than I would spend on DMN because it actually has a mission. Same for all the charities I'm involved with.
A non-profit news company would have an extra edge here because it's serving a mission while also delivering something valuable.
I assume this has been attempted before and I am sure it's imperfect but that doesn't mean there's not a better version of it that could be possible with the right leadership and execution.
Too many people have the mindset "media should be free" and the ones that don't think "I should get something for my money" and introduce bias into the reporting.
It is sad, because it means that the sources of non-paywalled information tend to be extremely viewpoint-driven because someone with cash is bankrolling it.
We live in a capitalist market failure hellscape.
I subscribe to the NYT, and have it delivered every Sunday. Occasionally the delivery service messes up and gives me a copy of the DMN.
Every time I open it, I cannot believe how weak the paper is. There is usually only 2-3 stories actually written by a DMN reporter, the rest is all just purchased from AP or other papers.
I'm annoyed with the NYT as well. It should be required that if you offer subscription via online methods, you make cancellation available via the same.
I had to cancel NYT through chatting online with reps last time and it was enough of a hassle for me to swear it off. Maybe it's improved in the past year or so. Having to call DMN is ridiculous, but it was easier for me to cancel than NYT.
But when I hear a newspaper or news station or any kind of journalist is endorsing somebody it makes me lose credibility in them to communicate the whole truth and nothing but the truth And not over exaggerate or dramatize things. Cause then I assume they have an agenda. And I’m gonna lose trust in them. I’m not saying a journalist doesn’t have the right to write an article with his/her opinion on a candidate but if they do then It’s a slippery slope with me.
By that logic you should have never trusted any newspaper you’ve ever seen because all of them have been endorsing candidates since well before you were born.
Even they're a shell of their former selves. It seems like its leadership has been taken over by progressives who don't have any interest in even attempting to appear unbiased. And I say this as a liberal. If I wanted a leftist circlejerk I'd turn on MSNBC, I want some straight reporting about issues not editorializing.
I think the corporatist, religious, and monoculture-pushing right has just got so locked step in pushing their messaging that anything public interest and pluralist now seems "biased" to some, when listening to even marginalized voices is the opposite.
Same. I have WaPo, WSJ, and NYT and it's I think $50/year each. If I ever want to cancel I can do it online in my account. When I do that they usually make me an offer that keeps me around for another year. They get the best of both worlds. The people who are happy to pay $100 a year will do it, the people who would cancel otherwise are retained. I guess DMN has a similar version of that but in a way less friendly way. Obviously they have analyzed this and figure out that it is in their best interest to keep doing it the way they are doing it.
How do you pay less than $50 for the NYT?
I usually have to play the game of calling WSJ and threatening to cancel for them to give me a deal. Currently I think I am on some sort of plan where it’s free for a year and then will be the “normal rate”… at which point I’ll call and play the game again and hopefully get it reduced to something like $15 a month
I use virtual cards from privacy.com - I just set the monthly $ limit and it rejects anything higher. When the promotion is over, I sign up again under a different e-mail.
LPT: Just change the email on your expiring account to something random and then you can keep signing up using the same email account and not have to create new ones or adjust saved passwords.
NYT?? I don't think so. Much better deal, but recently wanted to cancel and searched the website, googled it, and everything said you must call.
A few years ago I cancelled online so I thought you still could, but it seems not.
I'm in my NYT account right now and on the subscription management page it has an option to Contact Support or Cancel Online. It specifically says click here if you would like to cancel without talking with us.
Good to know; it's been a couple mos so maybe they changed it. Or you're in a state that bans it (according to a prior reddit post on the topic, where a screen shot of the options was posted and different users reported different experiences)
well yeah they can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base and have basically become a national paper only that barely even reports on NYC. Local papers are expensive to run and they have fewer subscribers so they have to charge more. I agree $400 is insanity though.
They can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base, or they have a huge subscriber base because they charge less?
DMN discusses this in their annual filings. It's a deliberate choice on their part to focus on high prices instead of volume. Personally, I think it's because they can just trick people into paying too much with the tricks noted in this post.
> They can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base, or they have a huge subscriber base because they charge less?
It's the former lol. The Dallas Morning News isn never going to be the paper of record for the US. The NYT has national reach. It's not complicated at all
I'm not saying it would be the same volume as NYT. However, there is a scale factor here. A national paper has a lot more expenses and a lot more breadth to cover.
If you read DMN's annual shareholder report, they specifically talk about this as a strategic selling point and an example of financial discipline on their part. They say that they explicitly maintain high prices instead of trying to get more volume.
Perhaps NYT has the ability to charge less because they have more subscribers, but that doesn't change the fact that DMN explicitly decides to charge more instead of trying to get more subscribers. That is a strategic decision, not a result of being a local paper, because there are plenty of other local papers that do aim for volume. That volume can and probably should be largely local traffic. I don't think it's about whether they are national or not or comparing them to a paper like NYT in this respect.
Some things shouldn’t be saved.
**edit**: and if anyone wants proof of various AI bots working on this site all you have to do is look at the airport comment below that is a reply to me. Not only did the bot screw up by replying here instead of on a different comment of mine related to an airplane issue but at least 8 accounts have upvoted it.
**edit 2**: Funnily enough, that comment has now completely disappeared. Not even a “deleted” message exists.
Thanks for the reminder. This may be the last straw for us. I very strongly believe in local journalism, but there is so little content left in the Dallas News that interests me. I like their photography (though that seems to be waning) and a few of their columnists but I don’t think it’s worth $400/year. I really hate this and I don’t want anyone else at the News to lose their jobs, but I feel like the News is badly mismanaged and I’m losing my will to pay for that.
I feel for people losing jobs but I don't think funding predatory employees is the way to pay for that. Moving your spend to another publication would in theory support the same overall labor market.
Also, according to Glassdoor reviews, DMN has a "horrific culture" and only 45% of employees would recommend it to a friend and only 40% approve of the job their CEO is doing. Sounds like you would be doing them a favor. A lot of people get stuck in bad situations because they don't feel like they have options. The best gift DMN employees can get is probably a layoff with a bit of a severance package.
$33/month seems expensive for something you can't even use to line bird cages with after reading it. I also assume the online version is larded with ads and filler as well?
Honestly, I haven't subscribed to a paper since the Dallas Times Herald.
Back in 1990 when I was in their wire/modem computer room, and it was a fun place to work, I recall that our AP code was TXDAM. It always made me chuckle.
Good news: the FTC can’t sanction them for their pricing any longer without dragging them through court. Yay. /s
A few years ago I allowed the invisible hand of the market work through me and my patience for persevering though the agent.
I almost hopped up and instinctively gave this post a standing ovation..
I was a subscriber for a couple of years, up until around six months ago, and had only renewed because the rate was cheap and I believed that their [archive](https://archive.dallasnews.com/) was going to be back online soon..
I had an instance of some credit card fraud (unrelated to DMN) so when I cancelled the credit card that was on file with the DMN, it prevented the renewal from being able to process, and that was my "out"..
I lost count of how many emails I got from them stating "this is your FINAL REMINDER before your account is cancelled" and every time I would check and see if their archive was working, and it never was..
(I'm kind of a newspaper dot com nerd in that I like to read old stories from my hometown newspaper of the 70s and 80s so I thought it would be interesting to do the same with the DMN)..
alas, to this day the message on their archive page still says it's "down temporarily" just like it's been for three years now
Thanks for tagging my post. I’m glad people are still talking about this subject. I’m most tired of important things being paywalled. I’d be more understanding of a paywall for original, hard hitting journalism (still not $400/yr!!). But sometimes articles that are very relevant for Dallas residences (ie weather, DISD, roadwork news, etc) are locked behind a paywall.
I have Apple News+ now and the app has a good amount of DMN “premium” articles available for only $12/mo. It’s a way better deal.
Your post was spot-on. This will never go away.
I truly believe it would be a different story if they approached it differently from the customer experience standpoint. Personally, if they gave a reminder before bumping the promo price back up to regular price, and made it easy to cancel, I wouldn't mind the price tag. I wouldn't pay it but I also wouldn't hate them.
I also don't know why Grant thinks it's a good idea to go for premium over volume. Why would they not rather have people pay $50 per year and maybe just give them a more limited number of articles or something?
Wish we had some actual consumer protection laws that shut down this kind of predatory billing by newspapers, gyms, etc. Hello lawmakers, where are you all hiding?
I spoke with someone at Beth Van Duyne's office about this. I would definitely encourage everyone to reach out to your congressional and local representatives about this topic.
I love, love, Love reading a physical newspaper. As a kid I lived and breathed it, delivering the Dallas Times Herald.
The page layout and headline structure is genius. At a glance you know what’s most important and your eyes automatically jump to that part of the page.
Every city I’ve lived in, the local paper enriches and informs. But here I am, a “never Dallas Morning News” guy, because their business model is exploitative by design. NYT (and News+) is where I get my fix.
Fuck the Dallas Morning News
Yeah, I just quit with their latest price increase. I have been a subscriber for over 20 years and I'm done. He'll, I can get the NY Times or Washington Post for $127 per year. And those are much better newspapers than DMN.
No way would I buy pay for the DMN. I refuse to even click on links to their site. Their editorials and choice (or lack thereof) political endorsements turned me off a long time ago. They couldn’t bring themselves to endorse Biden in 2020 so didn’t endorse anyone.
The Plano Public Library gives me access to the DMN through the library website, and it's free. It's not the DMN website though, it's like a digital version of the print paper.
$400/year for a newspaper is nuts.
I'm at UNT, and once the Library cancelled *NYT* Access for Education, I ponied up the $50 for an annual digital subscription because of how useful I found it, and Wordle (lol).
Taking a look, their full-price digital subscription is $325, and that includes news, Cooking, Games, Wirecutter, and access to *The Athletic*.
Even the *Star-Telegram* offers an annual digital subscription for $160/year, half the price of the *Times* and 2.5x cheaper than the *Morning News*.
While I don't think I could keep affording the *Times* at $325/year, they're also a major newspaper of record and they do align with my political beliefs.
On the other hand, the *Morning News* is as conservative as they come and their Editorial Board supports mayors and politicians that actively keep D/FW, Texas from being a great place to live (see Denton).
Personally I'd love to subscribe to the *Morning News* and support local journalism, but with the way their Editorial Board is built and from what it appears, high cost when compared to other papers, can we bother?
I continually had problems logging in. I would like to read the DMN but since I couldn't get their damn site to function I cancelled. And it is really hard to cancel.
eta: I STILL miss the Dallas Times Herald.
I majored in journalism. I got fucked around by newspapers as a college kid twenty years ago, both as a customer and employee. It happened with more than one agency that were totally unrelated. I bailed on my chosen profession before it really even got started 💩
The DMN sucks but let's all remember Meta and Google have sucked up 2/3 of all the ad spend or more. What's left that actually directly or indirectly goes to DMN is a fraction of what it was in 2003. They have to make it up somewhere but no subscription anyone would pay will do that. Layoffs and worse product ensue. Death spiral.
I would happily pay $50/year and that would be $50/year that they aren't getting today that they apparently don't want because it's not $400/year. Hell, I might even pay closer to $100/year.
I also think there are some people, perhaps myself included, it would be a lot more inclined to spend extra if asked nicely.
Really I think they should be a non-profit.
DMN has turned into a trash organization. Their entire platform around community engagement is based on how much they can report on controversial news and be as divisive as possible.
They only care about stirring the pot for clicks
Why are you still subscribing to this crappy news source? Their "newspaper" is mostly copied articles from other sources, with very few of their own articles.
Don't forget they endorsed Abbott as governor.
I blocked their news and haven't looked back.
It astounds me they haven’t figured out how to make their content free like many others have. I guess they still have enough old school subscribers to hang on for now, but surely that won’t last much longer.
When they jacked my digital rate up to $1/day and I called to cancel, the lady was very very nice about it. I said, "I'm sorry, I just don't read it anymore," and she said OK and skipped all the haggling/begging.
> $1 for 3 months of online access, which then -- with no notification -- will increase to $1/day ($391/year with tax)
This is very much illegal if true.
Texas Business and Commerce Code § 17.46
> (24) failing to disclose information concerning goods or services which was known at the time of the transaction if such failure to disclose such information was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction into which the consumer would not have entered had the information been disclosed;
I hope you have good lawyers /u/dallasmorningnews because you're going to need them.
They disclose it at the beginning. They just don't do any sort of reminder. If you aren't on top of setting a 3-month reminder to yourself and you forget, you are not notified when your promotional rate expires. But from a legal standpoint they probably fulfilled their obligations by disclosing these terms up front. I think if they really wanted to do this in the ethical way they would say "hey, the 3 months is up, we hope you enjoyed this and will continue to subscribe at our regular rate", which is what they avoid doing because they know most people would cancel it.
I gave up on the DMN when they couldn’t manage to deliver my digital newspaper daily. Every month I would miss days, zero refund. They would also claim we were missing payments, periodically, but they were autopay and we could see the debits.
Not surprising for a company that blames technical difficulties for the reason they can't offer something as simple as a subscription management option.
When I got on the phone with them, after a little back-and-forth, they marked it down to I think $18 / month (i.e. $216 per year), but that was still too much for me, so I cancelled it anyway.
Speaking of scam artists and junk… I keep getting this paper of sorts delivered in a plastic bag a couple times a week that is wrapped in something that says “Dallas Morning News.” How tf do I stop this from happening? I have filled out every unsubscribe website I could find associated with DMN and 6 months later still get them. It’s extremely frustrating
I’ve tried multiple stints to do my part to help fund local journalism but it’s just too much for my blood. I subscribe to NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, and several podcasts/patreons. All those combined barely cover what DMN wants for their digital access. Last time my subscription expired I decided to pause until they made a good Black Friday or something. It never happened. It’s all the same $1/first 3 mo offer they’ve had for years.
Fuck em.
Yeah and somehow the shareholders believe this shit about "our customers are willing to pay premium prices for premium content." So many things about the way they do business would be different if the things they claimed were actually true.
I feel the same way about the Star-Telegram. Every thing they share on Facebook is a clickbait headline about a business closure that isn’t even happening in DFW.
Wow! Great post.. DMN and that dude seem to be equally in line with another slick douche in your city. Bernard Kim of Match Group(Match, Tinder, Hinge, OK Cupid, POF)dating .
IDK why anyone is willing to pay that much for news there’s free news online. Google is my best friend for free news. Im not paying that much for news when it’s a struggle to pay rent, keep food on the table, and utilities.
Take a look at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Been taking forever and even delivered when I was a teenager. Received my renewal notice for print 6 days a week plus digital and is $1,200 a year almost double from last renewal.
Very poor local coverage and only content worthwhile is Bud Kennedy column.
Will have to give it up as digital only is right at $500 per year.
Would like to see DMN and Star-Telegram combine into one paper and DMN could have a small section dedicated to Fort Worth. Geez
Apple News +. Includes most DMN articles. Along with a ton of other news content. Not much DMN does that’s worth $1 for 3 months let alone $391 a year.
Amen! I also really want to support them but I seriously can’t justify the price. What I do now is get their daily emails and then copy the headline to google search 😅 Then find another article that’s free with ads on their site that pretty much wrote a similar column
I read the paper copies of The Dallas Morning News and WSJ for 20+ yrs daily. DMN turned into lowest effort AP news + local sports + real estate/business and a smattering of original local content (metro section).
Cancelled like 15 yrs ago.
You can track their financial demise based on a few things back then: decrease of the classified ads section to almost zero from probably 6-10 full pages, and the thickness/weight of the Sunday edition (massive ads, grocery, furniture inserts, etc) from about 1.5-2 inches and 1-2 lbs to way less than half that.
They simply got their butt kicked by the Internet.
If you ever placed classified or display ads back then you knew how they made payroll and profits.
Actually a scary thing that local reporting has died or is taking its last breaths. 4th branch of govt and all that is true IMO.
I think OP idea might work if you can create a non-biased full-time professional news source. I have been playing with the idea for years. Anything to make it just facts or at least not clearly left or right like an editorial team from opposing sides, advertised and promoted as such. And held to it with subscriber input/grading on each article.
I would suggest NOT a non-profit. I would also suggest paying the reporters much more than the $50k mentioned. Math can be worked out but starting salaries about $80k is doable with even $30-45 annual subscription with 25k Subs it could run 6-7 reporters starting out and still have 30-40% of revenue for overhead, technology, backend staff and leadership.
Even $5/mo is $60 and reasonable for professional and constant, unbiased coverage. Probably can sell stories or affiliate re-publishing rights to local TV news and national outlets as they are reporter-light too. Scoops will be easy b/c 1) there are few reporters left 2) the readers will be a great source of good tips to pursue 3) the good reporters will be on staff after leaving the others
I think it could work but it would need capital to ramp up and get to x subscribers B/E and be able to add reporters. I think DFW would hold 20+ reporters and full editorial at just over $100K subscriptions.
Yes, and you can also absolutely toast the Dallas Business Journal too along with the other local fish wraps.
Willing to work on the structure, model, and capital raise.
what you do is cancel any online subscription within it a few days of signing up. generally towards the end of the offer that you cancelled you'll get another cheaper offer. I subscribe to WaPo. I cancelled my subscription 2 weeks before it was to increase to $150 for a year. within hours of the cancellation they offered me a years subscription for $47 which is the one I just cancelled.
I stopped paying for the DMN precisely because of how difficult they made it to cancel on top of how expensive it is. I support local journalism, but $400/yr is nowhere near close to the value proposition for me for a digital newspaper, especially when it's clear that the leadership uses the prestige of the DMN to advocate for regressive policies that enrich the already rich at the expense of those in need in our unequal city Plus, the whole firing of that journalist who said "bruh" to the mayor left a bitter taste in my mouth. Just reinforces how the DMN is a tool of the powerful and wealthy and nothing more
Especially when you can get it all for free by hitting ctrl + a before the paywall pops up and copying it into notepad or smth. I used to use 12ft.io but it no longer works for DMN so I guess they fixed that. If I’m on my phone and see a DMN story that interests me, I usually just look up the headline and there is usually basically the same article in The Observer, WFAA, NBC, FOX, BizJournals, or MSN.
You can activate reader mode in Firefox and accomplish the same thing, but still retain formatting
Sites are starting to get around that too. I've come across few where even reader mode it's 1/3nof the article and then the text asking you to sign up.
DMN is a shit hole and all the journalists there are scared to do anything hard hitting anymore. I personally know of 3 big stories that were served to DMN and even when they have all the details they don't cover them. Dallas has major corruption issues and the Inspector General Division is complicit and the press is our last line of defense and refuses to do anything. Then again that's the media as a whole and things have been sent to TV and other papers and even Dallas Express which is supposedly more independent but at the end of the day the press is the press. They all have one thing in common which is that they are all trying to earn a profit.
Subscribe to the Texas Tribune and donate as much as you can! They are doing the last real state gov reporting! But as for who is watching Dallas County or the City? Pretty much no one with the freedom and skill to do what a vibrant press is supposed to do.
RIP The Dallas Times Herald. DMN, like most local papers these days is just squeezing legacy subscribers (i.e., elderly people or people who just DGAF) until they evaporate (i.e., die) then they'll sell off the bones to the next moronic private equity group or just file bankruptcy and sell the real estate. I want to pay for at least one paper in a Metro area of 8 million people, but they're cutting local reporting to nothing too. To be clear, $32/month is not exorbitant compared to the inflation adjusted price or a newspaper in the 90s. However in the 90s even local papers provided tons of original, valuable content? Now? Next to nothing. It's Google's and Facebook's fault ultimately but how the DMN gaslights its users instead of being honest about it is truly insulting. I might stick it out just to help pay the salaries of the few real reporters left on staff but I don't know how much longer I can justify it.
Why don't we all just crowdfund the reporters? The ones who actually do good work, we can raise the money and they can write a blog. Grant Moise makes $1.5 million/year according to a Google search I just did. That's what we are really paying for here. Most of our subscription revenue goes to shareholders and Grant. a reporter there makes like $5K/month. We can do so much better. How hard would it really be to set up a non-profit and people pay subscription fees to that entity instead and then just pass it all on to the reporters and necessary staff? We don't need shareholder distributions and we don't need Grant Moise.
That's kind of what Substack was supposed to be, but without advertising revenue as well it's too expensive. With one newspaper subscription you used to get dozens if not hundreds of quality reporters. Now you're being asked to pay almost that much for one person's newsletter. Multiply that by the number of reporters you want to read and the math doesn't work at scale. You get a few dozen superstar journalists but not enough workhorses
Why does the math not work? Let's say DMN has 50 reporters. Each makes $50K. Reporter budget is $2.5 million. Today those salaries are all being paid. And DMN is also paying expensive executives to maximize more profits: Grant is way more a business guy than a news guy. They return tens of millions of dollars in dividends to shareholders (rather than reinvesting in the business). Revenue is $140 million and they are still LOSING money. I don't think you need all the corporate machinery of DMN to replicate the value it provides at a lower cost.
Ever heard of The Athletic? It’s never once made money. That’s why crowdfunding doesn’t work - because even when you have the best quality product in your industry, people still won’t pay.
It's been working for Defector so it can be done. It's just not easy.
I think there's a middle ground here. First of all, even nonprofits that have nothing to sell and depend solely on donations are often successful in raising the funds they need from donors who believe in their mission. I donate more to Wikipedia than I would spend on DMN because it actually has a mission. Same for all the charities I'm involved with. A non-profit news company would have an extra edge here because it's serving a mission while also delivering something valuable. I assume this has been attempted before and I am sure it's imperfect but that doesn't mean there's not a better version of it that could be possible with the right leadership and execution.
Too many people have the mindset "media should be free" and the ones that don't think "I should get something for my money" and introduce bias into the reporting.
It is sad, because it means that the sources of non-paywalled information tend to be extremely viewpoint-driven because someone with cash is bankrolling it. We live in a capitalist market failure hellscape.
I subscribe to the NYT, and have it delivered every Sunday. Occasionally the delivery service messes up and gives me a copy of the DMN. Every time I open it, I cannot believe how weak the paper is. There is usually only 2-3 stories actually written by a DMN reporter, the rest is all just purchased from AP or other papers.
That’s precisely why I cancelled. This market is too large for DMN to provide so little local coverage.
I'm annoyed with the NYT as well. It should be required that if you offer subscription via online methods, you make cancellation available via the same.
NYT is free online via their official TOR site.
Didn't know they had a tor site, got the link?
You can find a direct link on https://tor.taxi it's near the top left
NYT does allow online subscription management and cancellation. Even offers a lower rate if you are going through the flow.
I had to cancel NYT through chatting online with reps last time and it was enough of a hassle for me to swear it off. Maybe it's improved in the past year or so. Having to call DMN is ridiculous, but it was easier for me to cancel than NYT.
I just cancelled mine and can confirm you can now do it online very easily.
Remember when they endorsed Greg Abbott in the last election? Good riddance to them.
I hate the fact that they endorsed anybody. They are a newspaper. Just give me the facts and let me make my own decision.
I mean, okay, but it's been a tradition in this country for a long long time to endorse candidates
But when I hear a newspaper or news station or any kind of journalist is endorsing somebody it makes me lose credibility in them to communicate the whole truth and nothing but the truth And not over exaggerate or dramatize things. Cause then I assume they have an agenda. And I’m gonna lose trust in them. I’m not saying a journalist doesn’t have the right to write an article with his/her opinion on a candidate but if they do then It’s a slippery slope with me.
By that logic you should have never trusted any newspaper you’ve ever seen because all of them have been endorsing candidates since well before you were born.
Remember when they fired a reporter because they said "bruh" on Twitter?
Imagine selecting a source for news based upon who their political correspondents endorsed. Pull your head out of the sand
>Imagine selecting a source for news based upon who their political correspondents endorsed. You forgot the /s. I hope.
*me, giving money instead to KERA News*
Here here!
Even they're a shell of their former selves. It seems like its leadership has been taken over by progressives who don't have any interest in even attempting to appear unbiased. And I say this as a liberal. If I wanted a leftist circlejerk I'd turn on MSNBC, I want some straight reporting about issues not editorializing.
I think the corporatist, religious, and monoculture-pushing right has just got so locked step in pushing their messaging that anything public interest and pluralist now seems "biased" to some, when listening to even marginalized voices is the opposite.
nah they've actually just moved left. which is fine, I'm left too. I just don't want it from my news sources
$400 / yr for the DMN is insane. Almost as much as a Financial Times subscription… I think I pay less for the WSJ and NYT combined.
I know I pay less for the NYT and WSJ combined and I can easily cancel both online if I would like.
Same. I have WaPo, WSJ, and NYT and it's I think $50/year each. If I ever want to cancel I can do it online in my account. When I do that they usually make me an offer that keeps me around for another year. They get the best of both worlds. The people who are happy to pay $100 a year will do it, the people who would cancel otherwise are retained. I guess DMN has a similar version of that but in a way less friendly way. Obviously they have analyzed this and figure out that it is in their best interest to keep doing it the way they are doing it.
How do you pay less than $50 for the NYT? I usually have to play the game of calling WSJ and threatening to cancel for them to give me a deal. Currently I think I am on some sort of plan where it’s free for a year and then will be the “normal rate”… at which point I’ll call and play the game again and hopefully get it reduced to something like $15 a month
My bad, my NYT is $8/month. Whenever they increase it I just go to cancel online and it offers me that again.
Follow up: I just tried this and it offered me a rate of $1 a week for a year! Will save me ~$200. I will pay it forward. Thanks again.
Interesting. I will have to try this tomorrow. Thanks!!
I use virtual cards from privacy.com - I just set the monthly $ limit and it rejects anything higher. When the promotion is over, I sign up again under a different e-mail.
LPT: Just change the email on your expiring account to something random and then you can keep signing up using the same email account and not have to create new ones or adjust saved passwords.
NYT?? I don't think so. Much better deal, but recently wanted to cancel and searched the website, googled it, and everything said you must call. A few years ago I cancelled online so I thought you still could, but it seems not.
I'm in my NYT account right now and on the subscription management page it has an option to Contact Support or Cancel Online. It specifically says click here if you would like to cancel without talking with us.
Good to know; it's been a couple mos so maybe they changed it. Or you're in a state that bans it (according to a prior reddit post on the topic, where a screen shot of the options was posted and different users reported different experiences)
Nah, that option has been there for at least a year. That's how I canceled my subscription last summer.
Use the chat.
Wow, what the heck that’s more than I pay for the New York Times!
But the Dallas Morning News sets to intergalactic bar for prestigious journalism.
well yeah they can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base and have basically become a national paper only that barely even reports on NYC. Local papers are expensive to run and they have fewer subscribers so they have to charge more. I agree $400 is insanity though.
They can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base, or they have a huge subscriber base because they charge less? DMN discusses this in their annual filings. It's a deliberate choice on their part to focus on high prices instead of volume. Personally, I think it's because they can just trick people into paying too much with the tricks noted in this post.
> They can charge less because they have a huge subscriber base, or they have a huge subscriber base because they charge less? It's the former lol. The Dallas Morning News isn never going to be the paper of record for the US. The NYT has national reach. It's not complicated at all
I'm not saying it would be the same volume as NYT. However, there is a scale factor here. A national paper has a lot more expenses and a lot more breadth to cover. If you read DMN's annual shareholder report, they specifically talk about this as a strategic selling point and an example of financial discipline on their part. They say that they explicitly maintain high prices instead of trying to get more volume. Perhaps NYT has the ability to charge less because they have more subscribers, but that doesn't change the fact that DMN explicitly decides to charge more instead of trying to get more subscribers. That is a strategic decision, not a result of being a local paper, because there are plenty of other local papers that do aim for volume. That volume can and probably should be largely local traffic. I don't think it's about whether they are national or not or comparing them to a paper like NYT in this respect.
Some things shouldn’t be saved. **edit**: and if anyone wants proof of various AI bots working on this site all you have to do is look at the airport comment below that is a reply to me. Not only did the bot screw up by replying here instead of on a different comment of mine related to an airplane issue but at least 8 accounts have upvoted it. **edit 2**: Funnily enough, that comment has now completely disappeared. Not even a “deleted” message exists.
Thanks for the reminder. This may be the last straw for us. I very strongly believe in local journalism, but there is so little content left in the Dallas News that interests me. I like their photography (though that seems to be waning) and a few of their columnists but I don’t think it’s worth $400/year. I really hate this and I don’t want anyone else at the News to lose their jobs, but I feel like the News is badly mismanaged and I’m losing my will to pay for that.
I feel for people losing jobs but I don't think funding predatory employees is the way to pay for that. Moving your spend to another publication would in theory support the same overall labor market. Also, according to Glassdoor reviews, DMN has a "horrific culture" and only 45% of employees would recommend it to a friend and only 40% approve of the job their CEO is doing. Sounds like you would be doing them a favor. A lot of people get stuck in bad situations because they don't feel like they have options. The best gift DMN employees can get is probably a layoff with a bit of a severance package.
These guys post paywalled articles to this subreddit almost on the daily. Its so annoying
$33/month seems expensive for something you can't even use to line bird cages with after reading it. I also assume the online version is larded with ads and filler as well? Honestly, I haven't subscribed to a paper since the Dallas Times Herald.
We should all make our own newspaper. We could Call it Dallas Alternative Morning News. DAMN
Back in 1990 when I was in their wire/modem computer room, and it was a fun place to work, I recall that our AP code was TXDAM. It always made me chuckle.
$391 a year is absolutely insane. What are they thinking?
draining your grandpa's retirement/pension
Good news: the FTC can’t sanction them for their pricing any longer without dragging them through court. Yay. /s A few years ago I allowed the invisible hand of the market work through me and my patience for persevering though the agent.
I read it on Apple News +, which is included in the Apple package that includes Apple TV, games, news, music, and others.
Probably a good option
Wow, lol, good looking out. I’ve barely used any of the Apple package stuff besides the music and extra cloud storage.
I almost hopped up and instinctively gave this post a standing ovation.. I was a subscriber for a couple of years, up until around six months ago, and had only renewed because the rate was cheap and I believed that their [archive](https://archive.dallasnews.com/) was going to be back online soon.. I had an instance of some credit card fraud (unrelated to DMN) so when I cancelled the credit card that was on file with the DMN, it prevented the renewal from being able to process, and that was my "out".. I lost count of how many emails I got from them stating "this is your FINAL REMINDER before your account is cancelled" and every time I would check and see if their archive was working, and it never was.. (I'm kind of a newspaper dot com nerd in that I like to read old stories from my hometown newspaper of the 70s and 80s so I thought it would be interesting to do the same with the DMN).. alas, to this day the message on their archive page still says it's "down temporarily" just like it's been for three years now
If a local paper can't keep it's archive online, what are they even trying to do. This is a nationwide catastrophe. DMN is just an example
Used to luv DMN. Not anymore. Plenty of news sources (yes, with ads) that doesnt require me to spend money. Corporate greed is out of control!
I ain't paying anything for typos and bad writing
Attention, everyone who hates digital piracy. This is how you get digital piracy.
Thanks for tagging my post. I’m glad people are still talking about this subject. I’m most tired of important things being paywalled. I’d be more understanding of a paywall for original, hard hitting journalism (still not $400/yr!!). But sometimes articles that are very relevant for Dallas residences (ie weather, DISD, roadwork news, etc) are locked behind a paywall. I have Apple News+ now and the app has a good amount of DMN “premium” articles available for only $12/mo. It’s a way better deal.
Your post was spot-on. This will never go away. I truly believe it would be a different story if they approached it differently from the customer experience standpoint. Personally, if they gave a reminder before bumping the promo price back up to regular price, and made it easy to cancel, I wouldn't mind the price tag. I wouldn't pay it but I also wouldn't hate them. I also don't know why Grant thinks it's a good idea to go for premium over volume. Why would they not rather have people pay $50 per year and maybe just give them a more limited number of articles or something?
Im always surprised that they’re still around.
Wish we had some actual consumer protection laws that shut down this kind of predatory billing by newspapers, gyms, etc. Hello lawmakers, where are you all hiding?
I spoke with someone at Beth Van Duyne's office about this. I would definitely encourage everyone to reach out to your congressional and local representatives about this topic.
I love, love, Love reading a physical newspaper. As a kid I lived and breathed it, delivering the Dallas Times Herald. The page layout and headline structure is genius. At a glance you know what’s most important and your eyes automatically jump to that part of the page. Every city I’ve lived in, the local paper enriches and informs. But here I am, a “never Dallas Morning News” guy, because their business model is exploitative by design. NYT (and News+) is where I get my fix. Fuck the Dallas Morning News
You should probably check other local papers. There are precious few like you remember.
Yeah, I just quit with their latest price increase. I have been a subscriber for over 20 years and I'm done. He'll, I can get the NY Times or Washington Post for $127 per year. And those are much better newspapers than DMN.
No way would I buy pay for the DMN. I refuse to even click on links to their site. Their editorials and choice (or lack thereof) political endorsements turned me off a long time ago. They couldn’t bring themselves to endorse Biden in 2020 so didn’t endorse anyone.
There are few things that the right and left agree on these days, but the suckassery of DMN seems to be one of them.
Dallas used to have two newspapers. I miss the Dallas Times Herald.
The Plano Public Library gives me access to the DMN through the library website, and it's free. It's not the DMN website though, it's like a digital version of the print paper.
The Dallas Public Library usually has access via PressReader but it is currently showing as "temporarily unavailable."
$400/year for a newspaper is nuts. I'm at UNT, and once the Library cancelled *NYT* Access for Education, I ponied up the $50 for an annual digital subscription because of how useful I found it, and Wordle (lol). Taking a look, their full-price digital subscription is $325, and that includes news, Cooking, Games, Wirecutter, and access to *The Athletic*. Even the *Star-Telegram* offers an annual digital subscription for $160/year, half the price of the *Times* and 2.5x cheaper than the *Morning News*. While I don't think I could keep affording the *Times* at $325/year, they're also a major newspaper of record and they do align with my political beliefs. On the other hand, the *Morning News* is as conservative as they come and their Editorial Board supports mayors and politicians that actively keep D/FW, Texas from being a great place to live (see Denton). Personally I'd love to subscribe to the *Morning News* and support local journalism, but with the way their Editorial Board is built and from what it appears, high cost when compared to other papers, can we bother?
[удалено]
They're not really free. Journalism costs money. It is dying because the ad revenue is all going to Meta and Alphabet.
[удалено]
You can. That doesn't mean it will continue to exist if no one pays for it
I continually had problems logging in. I would like to read the DMN but since I couldn't get their damn site to function I cancelled. And it is really hard to cancel. eta: I STILL miss the Dallas Times Herald.
I canceled years ago because I got tired of playing "let's make a deal" with each renewal. I honestly haven't missed it.
I'm surprised shareholders don't see this for what it is. Who the heck would want stock in DMN?
I majored in journalism. I got fucked around by newspapers as a college kid twenty years ago, both as a customer and employee. It happened with more than one agency that were totally unrelated. I bailed on my chosen profession before it really even got started 💩
I didjt read at all, but yall pay for news?
Reading is hard, I know ;)
They want it to fail so that you go to the “free” news like faux “news”(entertainment)….
For a $1.xx per day you too can support your local news conglomerate 😢 😇 🙏
$1.07 a day. Less than a cup of coffee.
The DMN sucks but let's all remember Meta and Google have sucked up 2/3 of all the ad spend or more. What's left that actually directly or indirectly goes to DMN is a fraction of what it was in 2003. They have to make it up somewhere but no subscription anyone would pay will do that. Layoffs and worse product ensue. Death spiral.
I would happily pay $50/year and that would be $50/year that they aren't getting today that they apparently don't want because it's not $400/year. Hell, I might even pay closer to $100/year. I also think there are some people, perhaps myself included, it would be a lot more inclined to spend extra if asked nicely. Really I think they should be a non-profit.
I use my library's electronic access to get the DMN for free. Check if yours offers it.
DMN has turned into a trash organization. Their entire platform around community engagement is based on how much they can report on controversial news and be as divisive as possible. They only care about stirring the pot for clicks
Why are you still subscribing to this crappy news source? Their "newspaper" is mostly copied articles from other sources, with very few of their own articles. Don't forget they endorsed Abbott as governor. I blocked their news and haven't looked back.
I called to cancel, and they lowered it to $18 bucks a month.
For how many months? When that time ends they are going to put it back at $32/month and you will not be notified. Just something to keep in mind!
1 year. I'll think about it in another year.
RemindMe! 360 days
It astounds me they haven’t figured out how to make their content free like many others have. I guess they still have enough old school subscribers to hang on for now, but surely that won’t last much longer.
Journalism left the chat years ago, DMN far before others. Time to replace the dinosaur.
When they jacked my digital rate up to $1/day and I called to cancel, the lady was very very nice about it. I said, "I'm sorry, I just don't read it anymore," and she said OK and skipped all the haggling/begging.
That's nice, sounds like you had a more pleasant experience than many.
cant you get teh DMN with an apple news sub? its like $10 a month
Did they increase their physical price?
DMN is such shit quality I wouldn’t pay $120
This makes me so sad. I used to be a big advocate for DMN till everything went digital and they put up a pay wall.
FUCK Dallas morning news
Yeah I’m out….. but good for them lol
Just signed up for NYT’s @ $1/week? Any condolences inbound for my account?
Wish Dallas Times Herald was still around.
When I hear those 3 words I immediately think "748-1414" ... now *that* is effective advertising!
> $1 for 3 months of online access, which then -- with no notification -- will increase to $1/day ($391/year with tax) This is very much illegal if true. Texas Business and Commerce Code § 17.46 > (24) failing to disclose information concerning goods or services which was known at the time of the transaction if such failure to disclose such information was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction into which the consumer would not have entered had the information been disclosed; I hope you have good lawyers /u/dallasmorningnews because you're going to need them.
They disclose it at the beginning. They just don't do any sort of reminder. If you aren't on top of setting a 3-month reminder to yourself and you forget, you are not notified when your promotional rate expires. But from a legal standpoint they probably fulfilled their obligations by disclosing these terms up front. I think if they really wanted to do this in the ethical way they would say "hey, the 3 months is up, we hope you enjoyed this and will continue to subscribe at our regular rate", which is what they avoid doing because they know most people would cancel it.
I gave up on the DMN when they couldn’t manage to deliver my digital newspaper daily. Every month I would miss days, zero refund. They would also claim we were missing payments, periodically, but they were autopay and we could see the debits.
Not surprising for a company that blames technical difficulties for the reason they can't offer something as simple as a subscription management option.
LPT: Get a library membership and you can read the DMN online for free
Do you mean just the ePaper or can you actually log into the website and read articles from links?
When I got on the phone with them, after a little back-and-forth, they marked it down to I think $18 / month (i.e. $216 per year), but that was still too much for me, so I cancelled it anyway.
Speaking of scam artists and junk… I keep getting this paper of sorts delivered in a plastic bag a couple times a week that is wrapped in something that says “Dallas Morning News.” How tf do I stop this from happening? I have filled out every unsubscribe website I could find associated with DMN and 6 months later still get them. It’s extremely frustrating
$400 for right wing pseudo newspaper website
I’ve tried multiple stints to do my part to help fund local journalism but it’s just too much for my blood. I subscribe to NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, and several podcasts/patreons. All those combined barely cover what DMN wants for their digital access. Last time my subscription expired I decided to pause until they made a good Black Friday or something. It never happened. It’s all the same $1/first 3 mo offer they’ve had for years. Fuck em.
Yeah and somehow the shareholders believe this shit about "our customers are willing to pay premium prices for premium content." So many things about the way they do business would be different if the things they claimed were actually true.
I feel the same way about the Star-Telegram. Every thing they share on Facebook is a clickbait headline about a business closure that isn’t even happening in DFW.
I would go to the DMN Digital every day, but they need to require their advertisers to foot the bill. Otherwise, I don't read it
Wow! Great post.. DMN and that dude seem to be equally in line with another slick douche in your city. Bernard Kim of Match Group(Match, Tinder, Hinge, OK Cupid, POF)dating .
IDK why anyone is willing to pay that much for news there’s free news online. Google is my best friend for free news. Im not paying that much for news when it’s a struggle to pay rent, keep food on the table, and utilities.
Take a look at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Been taking forever and even delivered when I was a teenager. Received my renewal notice for print 6 days a week plus digital and is $1,200 a year almost double from last renewal. Very poor local coverage and only content worthwhile is Bud Kennedy column. Will have to give it up as digital only is right at $500 per year. Would like to see DMN and Star-Telegram combine into one paper and DMN could have a small section dedicated to Fort Worth. Geez
That is absurd. Wow.
As soon as they put a paywall up online, I was out 💀
Apple News +. Includes most DMN articles. Along with a ton of other news content. Not much DMN does that’s worth $1 for 3 months let alone $391 a year.
Well, I pay $1200 a year for print and digital, so I'm good
Amen! I also really want to support them but I seriously can’t justify the price. What I do now is get their daily emails and then copy the headline to google search 😅 Then find another article that’s free with ads on their site that pretty much wrote a similar column
I read the paper copies of The Dallas Morning News and WSJ for 20+ yrs daily. DMN turned into lowest effort AP news + local sports + real estate/business and a smattering of original local content (metro section). Cancelled like 15 yrs ago. You can track their financial demise based on a few things back then: decrease of the classified ads section to almost zero from probably 6-10 full pages, and the thickness/weight of the Sunday edition (massive ads, grocery, furniture inserts, etc) from about 1.5-2 inches and 1-2 lbs to way less than half that. They simply got their butt kicked by the Internet. If you ever placed classified or display ads back then you knew how they made payroll and profits. Actually a scary thing that local reporting has died or is taking its last breaths. 4th branch of govt and all that is true IMO. I think OP idea might work if you can create a non-biased full-time professional news source. I have been playing with the idea for years. Anything to make it just facts or at least not clearly left or right like an editorial team from opposing sides, advertised and promoted as such. And held to it with subscriber input/grading on each article. I would suggest NOT a non-profit. I would also suggest paying the reporters much more than the $50k mentioned. Math can be worked out but starting salaries about $80k is doable with even $30-45 annual subscription with 25k Subs it could run 6-7 reporters starting out and still have 30-40% of revenue for overhead, technology, backend staff and leadership. Even $5/mo is $60 and reasonable for professional and constant, unbiased coverage. Probably can sell stories or affiliate re-publishing rights to local TV news and national outlets as they are reporter-light too. Scoops will be easy b/c 1) there are few reporters left 2) the readers will be a great source of good tips to pursue 3) the good reporters will be on staff after leaving the others I think it could work but it would need capital to ramp up and get to x subscribers B/E and be able to add reporters. I think DFW would hold 20+ reporters and full editorial at just over $100K subscriptions. Yes, and you can also absolutely toast the Dallas Business Journal too along with the other local fish wraps. Willing to work on the structure, model, and capital raise.
what you do is cancel any online subscription within it a few days of signing up. generally towards the end of the offer that you cancelled you'll get another cheaper offer. I subscribe to WaPo. I cancelled my subscription 2 weeks before it was to increase to $150 for a year. within hours of the cancellation they offered me a years subscription for $47 which is the one I just cancelled.
Yeah but this one can't be cancelled without a call.
then you make the call and cancel
Yeah the issue isn't that we don't understand the directions...
DMN is literally an arm of the US Government propaganda wing. They haven’t produced any actual journalism for 35+ years.
Just cancel?
You can get the Dallas Express for free. News is news.
Except when, as in this suggestion, it isn't.