BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Username: blog; Password: blog

30 comments on Username: blog; Password: blog

Username: blog; Password: blog
: Glenn Reynolds is stomping his foot on the ground in frustration at the Hartford Courant’s registration. I understand and sympathize.

Now I’m in a bit of a conflict of interest here because the sites I work on do now require lite registration (the online equivalent of name, rank and serial number: zip code, age, and gender). I don’t mind that kind of effort if it helps a site that gives me free content build a better business — it does — and if I have to do it only once and if I don’t have to remember a user name and password.

If a blogger I liked asked me for such registration or even more, I’d probably do it in a flash out of personal loyalty (wouldn’t you?)

But like Glenn, when faced with the need to give blood type and sexual history and SAT scores and with the even more troubling need to try my feeble memory with another damned user name and password for a site I may visit once a year via a link, I often turn and run. Not worth it.

But I don’t face that problem with the LA Times’s onerous registration for a simple reason: I use the laexaminer username and laexaminer password so conveniently and generously created by Ken Layne (or was it Matt Welch?) long ago (and still used — see this Winds of Change post linking to the LAT today).

And so I’m surprised we haven’t seen people creating a universal username and password (blog/blog) for sites that demand onerous registration: Try to get into the site with the blog/blog combination; if it doesn’t work, register under that combination to do the next guy in a favor.

But do that just for sites you’re going to visit only occasionally. If you live in Hartford, you are, in fact, better off going through the full registration because you’ll probably get advertising and perhaps content that is, in fact, more useful to you. If you plan to speak in forums that require registration, you won’t want every Tom-Dick-and-Bozo speaking as you. But if you live in Knoxville, well, that’s just a pain.

: Pssst, Glenn: I just tried to get into the Courant site with laexaminer/laexaminer. It worked. Maybe that’s already the secret password everybody knows….

30 responses to “Username: blog; Password: blog”

  1. John Edwards Avatar
    John Edwards

    Jeff, I think your laexaminer/laexaminer sign-in worked because you’ve already used it for the LA Times, another Tribune Co. paper. If you’ve signed up for one Tribune paper, you’ve signed up for them all. Just use the same username and password. I doubt Instapundit is avoiding the LAT, so if he ever has need of a Courant piece, he can just use whatever log-in he uses for that site.

  2. Kathy K Avatar
    Kathy K

    That one works on a lot of sites. Someone’s also been setting up anonymous/anonymous on quite a few sites (and passing it around so I don’t think mentioning it is a problem).

  3. michele Avatar
    michele

    Back in the first days of the war, I registered a username/pw at several sites that require registration so I could post the info with links I put up at Command Post.
    If only I could remember them, I would post it again.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Back in the day, the cypherpunks (a mailing list dedicated to cryptography, on-line privacy, and related nefarious activities) established the cypherpunks/cypherpunks username/password pair for this same purpose. You still find it in use on various high-tech and computer-geek web sites.

  5. BTD Greg Avatar
    BTD Greg

    I’ve been known to use the user id and password that James Joyner helpfully keeps at the top of the page over at Outside the Beltway.

  6. BTD Greg Avatar
    BTD Greg

    Uh…or used to. I just checked OTB, and it doesn’t seem to be there anymore.

  7. Angie Schultz Avatar
    Angie Schultz

    …the sites I work on do now require lite registration…zip code, age, and gender…
    The Washington Post requires this. I always lie.

  8. Yehudit Avatar
    Yehudit

    You used to be able to use the cypherpunk one at TNR online, but no more. :-(

  9. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    I’d be more inclined to register like this if I had any faith that the newspapers were actually USING the information in any useful way, but I can tell you from personal experience in the ad biz that tons of information is collected and then utterly ignored, indeed often stored in unretrievable form, by companies all over the world.

  10. Ken Lay ne Avatar
    Ken Lay ne

    Jeff – Matt & I set up all those logins long ago so we could (along with the half-dozen LAExaminer contributors) easily read all the news sites & let our readers join in the fun with minimal horror. Good to hear many of ’em are still working … happy new year!

  11. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    I agree that it’s difficult to manage multiple usernames and accounts across a quickly-growing number of sites. This is an area where a central data storehouse would be great (assuming it is secure) for both user and advertiser. If I could register just once for all of my favorite sites (and for sites I haven’t even discovered yet), I would be much more willing to give up more detail (with more honesty) than I am now. As it is, I just give up the minimum and, if the question is especially intrusive, I simply lie spectacularly.
    As for the Washington Post, I think their three questions are a model of minimal intrusion. How old are you, what’s your gender and what’s your zip? Boom, done. Any site that lets me through the gate with something that easy gets an honest answer from me.

  12. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    I’ve tried the paper name was login/password for others besides LA Examiner but I think blog/blog is brilliant – short, sweet, and easy to remember.

  13. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    You guys harbor so much contempt for the professional journalists, investors and stockholders who actually make possible the news and stories for which you jones, that you bitch and moan about a simple act like registering for sites. Or worse, you go all disingenuous and provide false information to said sites.
    Putting false info on a registration form — including “laexaminer/laexaminer,” if it’s not your own login — means you’re not holding up your end of the good-faith barter that’s been agreed upon between you and the provider. It’s no different than shoplifting something from the shop on the corner.
    The “everything should be free and painless” mindset that has overtaken so many web users, particularly the “blogging” crowd, is pretty sad. Real people and real money and real resources are devoted to making that news content exist. It’s not yours for the taking, at your own asking price (i.e., fake info), simply because YOU want it to be.
    The Glenn Reynolds of the world continue to fancy themselves as the equals of professional news providers. Glenn Reynolds, in real life, is a law teacher. Glenn Reynolds, in his hobby life, leeches off the sweat and reporting of professional journalists. Listening to him complain about site registration, as if he were OWED someone’s product just because he wants it, is the height of hubris. But hubris is nothing new over in Instaland.

  14. Steve Rhodes Avatar
    Steve Rhodes

    No we don’t have contempt for journalists, stockholders, etc.
    It is they who have shown contempt for the promise of the internet. They’ve largely slashed staffs and it shows. Stories on the NY Times site which used to have useful links now don’t even have a link to a study available online that is the subject of an article.
    I’m also amazed by the number of sites who don’t make it easy to find earlier articles by a columnist or have really crappy politics sections (we live in an era where a critical story on a candidate might not vanish, but they have to be organized in a usefull way and that takes staff).
    If news sites were smart, they’d allow people to read a story from an incoming link without registering (and they’d make urls short and easy to email and link to). If they like what they see, they might register for the site and come back often.
    If they just read that article and others occasionally, their information isn’t worth much.
    I wonder how much traffic has gone down on entertainment articles from the LA Times. I wonder how many people are bothering to pay for access?

  15. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Tom, Steve: I don’t hold journalists in contempt. I is one. And I am in favor of registration that helps the business; I do it and will even suggest that it will help blogs at some point to know more about who’s reading what. What Glenn complained about, starting this thread, is excessive registration, especially for the casual user who’s out of market. That’s what’s a pain.
    I forgot to mention (because I tend not to talk about work here) but on our sites, we switched to allowing a visitor’s first page — any page — to be seen without registration. This is link (blog and Drudge) friendly: If I send you to a story on one of my day-job sites, you can see it; if you want to go deeper, you need to give us age/zip/gender and, yes, that is invaluable for the business and not just for advertising but also for content. I hope that passes the reasonableness test.

  16. bigexec Avatar
    bigexec

    News sites don’t want out-of-town traffic. Local readers might buy from local advertisers. Everybody else just sucks bandwidth and costs money.

  17. Richard Cook Avatar
    Richard Cook

    Tom:
    In many cases the Glenn Reynolds of the world are much better than “professional news providers”. Based on what I have seen of coverage of the war and the politics surrounding it I would rather get my news from a weblog than a “professional news provider”. I know there are a lot of hard working dedicated journalists out there and I respect them (and read their work), but, as a whole fifteen minutes of cruising weblogs gives me more contextual information about subjects I am interested in than newpapers ever did.
    P.S. Get over yourself. You come off in the post sounding like a pompous windbag defending the journalistic intelligensia. If the journalist establishment can’t handle the competion of a Glenn Reynolds there is something seriously wrong with the provision of news in this country by the “professional news provider”.

  18. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Oh, so Glenn Reynolds is now providing the raw information from Baghdad? That’s how you “get your news”? Instapundit is sitting in Tennessee doing on-the-ground reporting in Iraq? What a feat.
    Give me a break. Reynolds is not a journalist. The news information you get from his site is second-hand, unless it’s a photo of the snow on the Tennessee campus.
    And I’m not “defending the journalistic intelligensia.” (Not that there would be anything wrong with that.) I’m (A) criticizing the freeloading mentality that has overtaken many web users, (B) criticizing the use of fake information on registrations, and (C) calling out the hubris of some bloggers.
    I may, however, be a pompous windbag. That’s for you to decide.

  19. Richard Cook Avatar
    Richard Cook

    Yeah, Glenn Reynolds and about 15 other blogs. They point to sources of information without the filter. As an example the day of the power outage on the east coast that stretched into the midwest and canada I had access to an MIT report on deregulation and how it may affect the dependability of electricity transmission. I’m not going to get that with a run of the mill newspaper. And I’ll tell you another thing, just to use one example a dentist in Iraq with a digital camera scooped the “professional news provider” of the anti-terrorism demonstrations in Iraq. You get a breadth of analysis and imagination you can’t hardly find in mainstream reporting. The “professional news provider” has become fossilized. They seem to think that us poor unwashed plebs need a filter in order to digest news. We don’t. And you don’t need to be a “professional news provider” to report news. The other issues (lying on registration and blogger hubris):
    If I want some content bad enough I’ll register.
    Freeloading: In my experience that seems to be in the distinct minority. Yeah there a folks that always want their ice cream free but so what?
    Blogger hubris – yeah, its there but you can reason out who talking BS and who is isn’t. You seem to have a pretty restrictive view of news providers. Only “jounalists need apply”. Who’s a journalist? J-school grads? Only if you get paid by the Gray Lady? Who?
    Blogs give me more info and original analysis then newspapers can. I just think until the mainstream news media stop trying to forcefeed me crap I will look for alternative sources of news. The difference is, as an example, that mainstream news tells me someone thinks a certain way. Blogs give me a pointer into why they think that way.

  20. Dan Z. Avatar
    Dan Z.

    Just wanted to give a thumbs up to Tom, and a thumbs down to disingenuousness on the part of Jeff. (Sorry, Jeff.) If a site demands “onerous registration”, the ethical thing to do is, of course, stop going to that site, not enter false registration info.
    Tom also calls attention to the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about (perhaps we should call it “the elephant in the blogosphere”?): The overwhelming majority of blogs live off the blood and sweat of traditional journalists. In all the “viva la revolucion!” over blogging, this fact is ignored or batted aside like a red-headed stepchild. Blogs are great and have a lot of value to offer; they are not, however, a replacement for journalism. (Or books — Jeff, I gotta say, I found it rather disappointing when you admitted in a recent interview that you don’t read books anymore because “everything seems boring compared to blogs”, or something similar. This is sort of like saying you don’t cook anymore because everything seems bland compared to Chee-tos.)
    Again, blogs have a lot to offer. Obviously, I wouldn’t be coming here or commenting here if they didn’t. But I prefer honesty to blind boosterism, and we could use a few more Toms in the blogosphere.

  21. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Dan:
    I stand slapped. I don’t disagree. But I just have to admit that, like Glenn, I have my limits. I don’t object to lite registration (I better not; I do that myself). I don’t object to heavy registration for something I’ll value. But heavy registration for something of nominal value… push, meet shove. We need some better solutions. Long ago, the newspaper industry tried in an online consortium to come up with a universal registration and it’s too damned bad that didn’t work; it would have helped everybody. Maybe that should be started up again…

  22. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    “News sites don’t want out-of-town traffic. Local readers might buy from local advertisers. Everybody else just sucks bandwidth and costs money.”
    And as long as they keep that attitude, they’ll continue to be small local newspapers instead of global papers whose particular bunch of attributes COULD attract bigger, broader audiences.

  23. Richard Cook Avatar
    Richard Cook

    Dan Z.
    Its not blind boosterism. i get something from blogs I cannot get from mainstream news. There is no elephant in the living room. Its a known (not to use a Rummyism) that blogs point to different sources. Some are new articles, some are original research and most comment on existing articles. I do not know where you get the “blind boosterism” tag. Like I said several post above I use mainstream news as a pointer and that blogs provide analysis and sources that mainstream news can’t or won’t provide. And unless you are paying for access to a blog, most if not all of them are free so I do not know where you get “The overwhelming majority of blogs live off the blood and sweat of traditional journalists.” Is not their writing (traditional journalist) once printed out there in the public domain? What money is changing hands?
    Blogs are filling a niche that mainstream journalism is not or can not fill.

  24. Bill Peschel Avatar
    Bill Peschel

    Nobody’s even mentioned that the LA Times hides its book reviews in its calendar section, which I find bizarre. They’ve effectively cut themselves off from making an impression on the culture.
    Of course, if the reviews were any good, this would be considered a bad thing.
    PS: laexaminer/laexaminer works on the London Times site as well.

  25. bigexec Avatar
    bigexec

    Mike G said,
    “And as long as they keep that attitude, they’ll continue to be small local newspapers instead of global papers whose particular bunch of attributes COULD attract bigger, broader audiences.”
    Mike, they don’t want bigger, broader audiences. They want profitability on Wall St. Bigger audiences cost money, they don’t respond to local email offers that the heavy registrations spawn by offering advertisers targeted demographics.
    Fewer readers — but local readers — make for profitable news sites.
    They aren’t selling,so they don’t want volume. They want casual readers to go away and stop sucking bandwidth.
    We are freeloaders.

  26. Dan Z. Avatar
    Dan Z.

    Rich Cook: I think “analysis” is a charitable word for what most blogs bring to the table, which is opinion. When I say “most blogs live off the blood and sweat of traditional journalists”, I mean that they require true journalists to manufacture blogfodder for them, and that they are often unwilling to admit how little they actually bring to the table. Their rebuttal of one article is often done by linking to another article. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it isn’t journalism. There is no work being done except the work of pointing to work someone else has done. Saying I like one painting better than another does not make me an artist, and saying I like one article better than another does not make me a journalist.
    I don’t mean to diminish all blogs, or their potential. Some blogs will on rare occasions engage in the hard reportorial or research work of journalism. And blogs are very good at what they do, which is highlighting interesting bits of culture and providing forums in which to discuss them. Blogging is very good at building community around a certain thoughtbase, and bloggers definitely have more freedom to choose their words than paid journalists do. There’s a lot to be said in favor of them. So why do so many try to hog glory they haven’t earned? Why do so many feel the need to pretend that they are doing the hard work of journalism? That’s what bothers me.

  27. Steve Rhodes Avatar
    Steve Rhodes

    Newspapers don’t just server Wall Street or at least they shouldn’t.
    There are these concepts like public service and importance of information in a decocracy. Papers which aren’t considered natioanal do stories which are of national (and international) importance and should be read by a wider audience.
    And if that doesn’t work, then prestige. Go to most any journalism conference and there will be a pile of reprints of important series and stories. Now they can be read by more than an audience of journalists who might not even bother to read every reprint they pick up. They can be read by people who care about those stories.
    And if a paper builds an audience beyond their local market, they can make money off it by getting national advertising, keyword advertising and in other ways that hasn’t even been thought of yet.

  28. Richard Cook Avatar
    Richard Cook

    Dan Z.
    “I mean that they require true journalists to manufacture blogfodder for them”– I really think you just don’t like blogs. Its not like the bloggers are standing over the sweat drenched, cat scarred backs of the journalist screaming “More, more, more!!!!” (Apologies to “Andrea True Connection” if you are old enough to remember)
    “Blogging is very good at building community around a certain thoughtbase, and bloggers definitely have more freedom to choose their words than paid journalists do.” — That is not a function of blogging, that is a function of responding to media whether it is print, video, blogs whatever. Bloggers just do this faster.
    “that they are often unwilling to admit how little they actually bring to the table.” — This is just patently not true. At most if not all of the blogs I look at the blogger is the first to admit that he or she is providing a forum and would be the first to recuse themselves from debate if they know nothing about the subject at hand. As an example look at Winds of Change today. The site has taken existing reporting and used it as a base to bring in a guest blogger with expertise in the subject matter (Military contracting) to expound on the events in the controversy. Yes this person links to alot of existing stories but that provides a base of discussion for a commentator with knowledge of the subject. This is what the good ones do. The bad ones really aquire no voice and are just shouting in the wilderness.

  29. arminius Avatar
    arminius

    I don’t think it is like shoplifting…it is more akin to sharing a grocery store VIP customer card or tag. We are slightly messing up the collection of demographic information, no more. If someone were to share, say, a WSJ Online login, that WOULD be more like shoplifting.
    If the online publications think this practice messes with them too much, they can easily set up their logins to lock out if accessed from multiple ip addresses simultaneously, like porn sites do to prevent sharing. If they don’t take this simple step, then it must not be hurting them too badly….
    BTW, on sites that use an email address as the username, I have found that laexaminer@laexaminer.com/laexaminer often works as well.

  30. CGeib Avatar
    CGeib

    Jeff, sorry, but I refuse to cooperate with anyone’s demographic database. I was born in 1900, am female, and live in the tony 90210 Zip code. It it gets that far, I require food stamps to survive. I have a grocery customer card registered to my daughter when she was a temporary employee. So, the purchases of a 58 year old divorced male are registered as the demographic preferences of a 20 year old single female. Works for me. But then, I’m the kind of guy who’s responses on the last census were: Ethnicity – American; Race – Human.