Steve Yelvington says that unless readers are willing to accept Javascript, they're unwelcome on most newspaper Web sites:

Another common complaint is "it doesn't work with Javascript turned off." Well, here's a wake-up call: Since we often use Javascript to deliver advertising, users with Javascript disabled aren't particularly welcome. They're not participating in the fundamental free trade that enables news sites to exist: Your attention (which I can sell to my advertisers) in exchange for my content.

Why turn away readers?

Steve says it's a limitation of Open AdStream, which is used by most newspaper sites. It seems to me that this is not the users' problem to fix by welcoming Javascript. It's the publishers' problem to fix by figuring out a way to serve ads to users to who choose not to let you run programs on their computers. Posted by bp at April 21, 2003 11:24 AM
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