] Imagine if a trip to the corner newsstand required
] handing over your name, address, age, and income to the
] cashier before you could pick up the daily newspaper.

This is an issue I am at odds about. Yes, I understand that the newspapers are paying more and more to run websites that are free to the public, and are looking for a way to re-coop that cost. They try to tailor their ads to the types of people who read, and advertisers want to know that demographic data. My concern is "how" that info is gathered.

With Print, the publisher gets info from 2 places. Subscribers (physical adderss of person is known), and from newsstands (area that newsstand services is known). They can they look at existing informations, census data, etc, to learn the average income, age group, professions, etc. They can build demographic data, regardless of whether people subscribe or all buy the paper at a newsstand. Ie With print magazines, there is an option that allows people to buy the paper, and the paper to collect demographic information about their readers, without tracking the specific reader.

Online, they are using the registration to try and get this demographic data (ie age, income, approx geographic location, proferssion). However there is no way they can get this information without tying it to a specific user. So in the digital world, they know who I am, my age, my profession, my income, and anything else I choose to be truthful on. Then, unlike print, they know what stories I look at, approx how long, etc. Several sites track where a user goes, but these papers associate a name with that browsing, not simply an IP or random session number.

This scaries me for several reasons. If people are afraid that what they read could be exposed or released, then to protect themselves they will stop reading things that are counter to the majority view. This ultimately weakens us as a society.

Complaints over online newspaper registration