An insider bummer

Last week, I came home from a long day. Four hours of class, followed by a six hour shift in the Topeka Capital Journal newsroom. I was exhausted.

I got home, unhooked my laptop, settled into my chair and got on espn.com, like I always do. It's my happy place. I always know I'll find something to read and interest me there. This time, there was a huge front page story about my St. Louis Rams. I got excited and was ready to read away about my boys.

I clicked on the story to get the news and saw that it was an ESPN Insider story. What that means is that I have to have a subscription to read the story. What a bummer. Not to mention, just when you get on the site ,a commercial starts to play, without even clicking on it.

ESPN Insider burns a hole in people's pocket by charging them to read premium stories. It's a growing trend.

This is becoming more and more common. Good stories by quality journalists that I want to read, but can't. Despite my anger and frustration at the time, I understand why these companies do it.

I did cave under the pressure for one site. I pay eight bucks a month to read jayhawkslant.com. I have to, it's for work, I have to know what's going on. The message boards knew about C.J Giles before most journalists got word of it.

Paying for websites is one thing, but getting bombarded with ads when you are trying to read those stories or other stories is a different thing. I hate it, get those ads out of my way. I've gotten used to ignoring them, but it's annoying.

Again, I understand why websites have to use Google Adsense. But, in my years of surfing for good stories, I've never clicked on one of those ads, and I never will.

Ads belong on television, in the newspaper, the web is ours.

I know that's not how it works, or will ever works, but that's how I feel. Then again, when I get a job out of college, those ads could be paying my salary, and then I might have a much different view on it.