So yesterday, against my better judgement, I started my day at cleveland.com.
Wow, how do you cheat at craps and win $5,000?
That looked like an interesting article, so I looked for the little key icon, which means the story is for subscribers only, and, lo and behold, no key. I checked to make sure the article wasn't by the Woke Nancy Kelsey. Nope, normal writer Sean McDonnell.
I begrudgingly clicked on the LINK.
Oh, shame on me. I keep saying I will never go to cleveland.com, but you know what? I'm really, really stupid. Guess what popped up? An unmarked pay wall.
You get the first line free, then the option to buy a $1 all day pass to read the rest.
Editor Chris Quinn tricked me, yet again. But I don't blame him, I blame myself.
So when I clicked on his website, I avoided the keys, I avoided the ads, and then landed on a story that doesn't exist (for me). But now there's another ad, another email promotion, and a block of options on how to subscribe. Now I can't see cleveland.com's internal numbers, but they better hope most of their readers are as dumb as me and keep coming back despite multiple hurdles. Total time spent on actual clevelad.com content? Zero. I got what I paid for.
You say I should just pay for cleveland.com? Uh, no.
Pay for Browns Coverage, advice columns, a woke editorial board, and glorified Mommie Bloggers?
There is no mind trick that Chris Quinn can play to make that happen.
You say you wouldn't pay anything for Beacon of Speech, either? Fair Enough. At least the Constitution grants me the right to suck on my own accord.
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