Fetch WSJ (free) recipe fails

[dagon]

Since 3/12/2025 attempts to fetch the WSJ using the Wall Street Journal (free) recipe have failed. Sometimes these errors go away after a couple of days. This problem has persisted. An example of the Conversion Error notices I've gotten are like the following I received today.

Spoiler:

calibre, version 8.0.0 (win32, embedded-python: True)
Conversion error: Failed: Fetch news from The Wall Street Journal (free)

Fetch news from The Wall Street Journal (free)
Conversion options changed from defaults:
output_profile: 'generic_eink'
verbose: 2
Resolved conversion options
calibre version: 8.0.0
{'add_alt_text_to_img': False,
'asciiize': False,
'author_sort': None,
'authors': None,
'base_font_size': 0,
'book_producer': None,
'change_justification': 'original',
'chapter': None,
'chapter_mark': 'pagebreak',
'comments': None,
'cover': None,
'debug_pipeline': None,
'dehyphenate': True,
'delete_blank_paragraphs': True,
'disable_font_rescaling': False,
'dont_download_recipe': False,
'dont_split_on_page_breaks': True,
'duplicate_links_in_toc': False,
'embed_all_fonts': False,
'embed_font_family': None,
'enable_heuristics': False,
'epub_flatten': False,
'epub_inline_toc': False,
'epub_max_image_size': 'none',
'epub_toc_at_end': False,
'epub_version': '2',
'expand_css': False,
'extra_css': None,
'extract_to': None,
'filter_css': None,
'fix_indents': True,
'flow_size': 260,
'font_size_mapping': None,
'format_scene_breaks': True,
'html_unwrap_factor': 0.4,
'input_encoding': None,
'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x0000023D0AAC4C90>,
'insert_blank_line': False,
'insert_blank_line_size': 0.5,
'insert_metadata': False,
'isbn': None,
'italicize_common_cases': True,
'keep_ligatures': False,
'language': None,
'level1_toc': None,
'level2_toc': None,
'level3_toc': None,
'line_height': 0,
'linearize_tables': False,
'lrf': False,
'margin_bottom': 5.0,
'margin_left': 5.0,
'margin_right': 5.0,
'margin_top': 5.0,
'markup_chapter_headings': True,
'max_toc_links': 50,
'minimum_line_height': 120.0,
'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
'no_default_epub_cover': False,
'no_inline_navbars': False,
'no_svg_cover': False,
'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.GenericEink object at 0x0000023D0BCE4810>,
'page_breaks_before': None,
'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
'preserve_cover_aspect_ratio': False,
'pretty_print': True,
'pubdate': None,
'publisher': None,
'rating': None,
'read_metadata_from_opf': None,
'recipe_specific_option': None,
'remove_fake_margins': True,
'remove_first_image': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
'renumber_headings': True,
'replace_scene_breaks': '',
'search_replace': None,
'series': None,
'series_index': None,
'smarten_punctuation': False,
'sr1_replace': '',
'sr1_search': '',
'sr2_replace': '',
'sr2_search': '',
'sr3_replace': '',
'sr3_search': '',
'start_reading_at': None,
'subset_embedded_fonts': False,
'tags': None,
'test': False,
'timestamp': None,
'title': None,
'title_sort': None,
'toc_filter': None,
'toc_threshold': 6,
'toc_title': None,
'transform_css_rules': None,
'transform_html_rules': None,
'unsmarten_punctuation': False,
'unwrap_lines': True,
'use_auto_toc': False,
'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: Recipe Input running
Downloading recipe urn: builtin:wsj_free
Trying to get latest version of recipe: wsj_free
Using user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "runpy.py", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
File "runpy.py", line 88, in _run_code
File "site.py", line 83, in <module>
File "site.py", line 78, in main
File "site.py", line 50, in run_entry_point
File "calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 215, in main
File "calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 31, in gui_convert_recipe
File "calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 25, in gui_convert
File "calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 1089, in run
File "calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 242, in __call__
File "calibre\ebooks\conversion\plugins\recipe_input.py ", line 152, in convert
File "calibre\web\feeds\news.py", line 978, in __init__
File "<string>", line 221, in get_browser
File "mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 257, in open
File "mechanize\_mechanize.py", line 313, in _mech_open
mechanize._response.get_seek_wrapper_class.<locals >.httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 401: HTTP Forbidden

Sadly, I don't program very well, and can only report.

Has anyone else gotten such an error notice lately using the Wall Street Journal (free) recipe?

[unkn0wn]

use the other wsj recipes.. they are free too.

[dagon]

Originally Posted by unkn0wn

use the other wsj recipes.. they are free too.

Thanks!!! I wasn't aware the other WSJ recipe would work pretty much the same.

Again, my thanks!