The Hibbing Daily Tribune, my column’s home for the last eight years, kindly ran a story on today’s front page about the recent success of my book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.” I think it’s the first story of the summer for their intern Matt Nelson, a former student and fellow conflicted intellectual type. I enjoy that he wrote the story straight up … like I was a cross country runner. Nerds like me never get to “blast the competition away,” until today.
Modern Life in Northern Minnesota
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Aaron J. Brown, author
I'm AB. I live in the woods of the Iron Range. I write about the people, news and culture of Northern Minnesota. I host a radio show, teach college and raise kids. More
Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range
By Aaron Brown A 21st century memoir of a place and a people: (Buy now on Amazon) -- The Iron Range is a string of blue collar towns along an iron formation in northern Minnesota, many of which ... Read More →
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The Great Northern Radio Show features music, comedy & stories about modern life off the beaten path: Written, produced & hosted by Aaron J. Brown with a talented supporting cast and Minnesota musicians and guests. Each episode broadcasts from a different location. The next Great Northern Radio Show is Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019 at 5 ... Read More →
They stopped me with their blasted registration thing again. Don’t they realize how much that reduces their traffic?
it’s a pun about the mines haha i thought you might appreciate it.
LOL. Thanks for the chuckle, Matt.
Really. I would link Facebook posts to the paper a lot more if they would get all those barriers down. In the new media, traffic is what counts. The barriers the local papers have put up decrease their traffic. I look for stories in other papers that don’t cause so much trouble for my friends. I’d much rather cite the local papers, but don’t want others to encounter the same troubles.
I recognize that registration appears to be a simple thing on the face of it all. But I have registered dozens of times with the local papers over the years, and I still have trouble. The model of disrupting access is not the model to survive. The model that will survive is the one that makes it free and easy to get to the articles. Hopefully attractive, USEFUL, and less intrusive ads will attract visitors to click on them, and give advertisers incentive to pay for them.
If they won’t, the paper is dead in any case.
But creating barriers to access doesn’t help anyone.
See if you can reason with your management.