Ask Slashdot: What Online News Is Worth Paying For? 361
schnell writes "The increasing prevalence of online news paywalls and 'nag walls' (e.g. you can only read so many articles per month) has forced me to divide those websites into two categories: those that offer content that is unique or good enough to pay for vs. those that don't. Examples of the former for me included The Economist and Foreign Policy, while other previous favorite sites The New York Times and even my hometown Seattle Times have lost my online readership entirely. I also have a secret third category — sites that don't currently pay/nag wall, but I would pay for if I had to — Ars Technica and Long Form come to mind. What news/aggregation sites are other Slashdotters out there willing to pay for, and why? What sites that don't charge today would you pay for if you had to? Or, knowing this crowd, are the majority just opposed to paying for any web news content on principle?"
LWN (Score:5, Informative)
Re:50 cent (Score:5, Informative)
I get most of my news from the state funded TV network's news section of their web site. The abount I pay for this in taxes comes down to approximately $ 0.5 per day.
Same here; BBC news and BBC website!
Re:Online Propaganda (Score:0, Informative)
Why should I pay for content that amounts to Propaganda, supporting increasingly corrupted civic institutions and companies, all against my own interest. And this is even more my eyeballs are the product being sold to advertisers.
Why should I pay one penny for a word of this?
Why should I pay one penny for even a single line of code? It all amounts to Propaganda, with vendors pushing out hundreds of new features, all against my own interest. All software should be given away for free, no matter what. After all, programmers can sustain themselves on sunshine and happy thoughts, apparently just like writers.
BBC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:STOP beta.slashdot.org ALREADY! (Score:2, Informative)
Use "http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1" and you'll never have to see the beta again.
Re:NYT for me, but paying somewhere is important (Score:4, Informative)
Remember -- who ever pays for it gets to decide what goes in. I don't want that to be the government, nor do I want it to be some rich "benefactor" with an agenda to push. Sure, we can get stuff like the Snowden leaks for free, but we need journalists like those at the Guardian to pore over the data and find the juicy bits.
You realize, of course, that those Guardian journalists work for the Guardian, which is funded by a trust created by a wealthy man, for the purpose of ensuring that the Guardian stayed to the editorial course he had laid out. So, it's EXACTLY a case of a publication with a "rich "benefactor" with an agenda to push."
I paid $200 a year for the Wall Street Journal (Score:5, Informative)
Until Rupert Murdoch took it over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... [nytimes.com]
Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal
By DAVID CARR
Published: December 13, 2009
Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)
The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.
Accurate, objective, well-selected reporting that I can depend on is easily worth $200.
Propaganda isn't worth the time wasted.
I still subscribe to Science magazine.
Stratfor (Score:4, Informative)
I used to pay for Stratfor online. I found they have generally the most insightful information on international affairs. For example, their coverage of the Russian natural gas pipeline embargo on the Ukraine a decade ago and the repercussions it had for energy policy downstream in Germany and Central Europe was extremely important for understanding the sea change it caused. Germany's Energiewende is a direct result of that event. No other news source in the world then or since really understood the immense ramifications.