Your comments

After reading and digesting all of the thoughtful comments on this post, I have come to the conclusion that I am equally offended with the way SA handled the rollout of the new paywall as I am the pricing of it. From the outside looking in, it seems that SA is in dire straits financially and this is a last ditch effort to stay afloat. If this is indeed the case, I would have approached the situation more humanely by appealing to users for their financial support in order to assure SA’s survival as an open and accessible platform to share opinions.

Clearly, for many users, the attraction to SA is equally split between the articles and the comments. Does this warrant a $20/month subscription fee?  I don’t think so because many of the contributors aren’t qualified to make financial recommendations and the SA editorial staff does not adequately weed them out. Bear in mind that many users are novices and are easily swayed by opinions of self described “investment professionals”. However, comments by savvy, financially astute users can usually prevent poor investment choices particularly by less knowledgeable investors.

I personally don’t think SA is justified asking for $20/month because of the time needed to separate fact from fiction with many of the contributors who are not qualified to be published on the site. Perhaps I would be more inclined to sign on for the premium service if SA committed to investing some of these membership fees to doing a better job of qualifying authors and articles and eliminating those that aren’t “fit to print”. Sometimes less is more. Just my 2 cents. 


+1 to virtually every comment made on this feedback page. I have been a long time subscriber to Barron’s and find their research much more insightful than many of the contributors on SA. The quality and thoroughness of their writing and editorial staff is second to none. And for me the icing on the cake are the daily newsletters that are available at no additional cost. I have found many valuable investment ideas in both the weekly magazine and the daily roundup newsletter. As an added plus Barron’s staff are very responsive to email correspondence.