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?"
50 cent (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:50 cent (Score:5, Interesting)
I object to the implication that I am supposed to pay for all the bullshit and propaganda funnelled in through my senses, since I have to spend the time and memory to sort any sort of useful truth out of it, dont forget the ads. My time is worth money; far more money than any stinking newsclown I can think of. THEY SHOULD PAY ME to intake their particular brand. I want my money and I want it NOW!!!
Until then I will kick off my shoes, air my dirty socks and comment on whatever unpleasant thing crosses my mind, searching for kindred spirits.
Pay me, I will be more polite.
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Yes, master.
Content Depth. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sites like the Economist, Foreign Policy, and even the Wall Street Journal (At least pre News Corp). Are sites that give focused information into a particular area. You are getting information that it hard to get elsewhere.
The Times, or your local papers tend to be less indepth and that means you can find the same information almost anywhere.
Re:Content Depth. (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point about the distinction between in depth coverage of some specific topic area that has value and general coverage. Especially since so much of the general coverage now days is repackaging the same AP articles in every news paper in America. I can't see a valid reason to pay for the online edition of my local paper when 90% of their content comes from the AP and is basically identical to what every other paper in America has. So to me the question is whether they generate sufficiently unique content that is of a high enough value to justify me expending money on it. So far I haven't found any sites like that. Doesn't mean that they don't exist I simply haven't found any site where I can't get essentially the same information for free someplace else.
Re:Where to obtain relevant news ? (Score:4, Funny)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Where to obtain relevant news ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dice want to commercialise Slashdot and are asking you what you are prepered to pay them for it, not for real journalism.
You say that like it is a bad thing. The truth is that we live in a capitalist society where nobody works for free and running a high traffic website like slashdot costs money in hosting, routing, etc.
You have to get the money in to pay for all this stuff somehow be it subscriptions and a paywall or just tons of adverts which you have try and work show to people even though they want to avoid them with ad-block or similar.
If DICE one decided that slashdot was not profitable for them to run then they would have to pay money to keep it running as a loss leader of some kind. They MIGHT do this, but then they might just turn the site off instead. If you would rather that they turned it off you can simulate that quite well now by just leaving and never coming back. If you would rather slashdot still existed in some form then wouldn't you rather it was able to support it's own existence financially?
Re:Where to obtain relevant news ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that like it is a bad thing. The truth is that we live in a capitalist society where nobody works for free and running a high traffic website like slashdot costs money in hosting, routing, etc.
In case you hadn't noticed, Slashdot supplies links to other news articles, and the members contribute the discussion/content. "Nobody works for free" - that's exactly what happens with comments; community members write them for free.
If Slashdot wants a paywall then it's going to need to significantly up the quality of the articles (start writing/researching its own material, rather than just link and have an editor write a summary). Or seriously beef up its various subsites (they are apparently called "topics" now): business intelligence, cloud, datacenter, etc.
Re:50 cent (Score:5, Funny)
Is that you, Rupert?
LWN (Score:5, Informative)
Online Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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The Free Software movement is not about money.
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Quite true. Software should generally be Free. One of the benefits that we all gain from this is that, when software doesn't have to be locked up just to force people to pay for it, it can be distributed in source code form. And that helps prevent issues with embedded malware, and embedded exploitation of the users too.
But people who write software need money to feed themselves and their families and not all software is appropriate to an addon service supported model.
I actually think that closed source software is just a symptom of a capitalist society.
Re:Online Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is not really a news site, but I would pay for wikipedia if paywalled. I did voluntary pay a bit, twice. It is in general very useful for me.
Otherwise perhaps occasionaly for an in depth article by a repute dpublisher (even then, max. $2), but not a subscription.
I, too have coughed up cash for Wikipedia. I'd actually pay google, but if they billed me per-search, I'd go bankrupt quickly. Happily, they're selling me to all and sundry so I don't have to.
I'm inclined to the communistic approach to pay-for-content. Wikipedia got a lot more than $2 from me (more than once). But my ability to pay for stuff goes up and down with the economy and, if anything, my need for some of that same stuff goes up when the economy goes down. I figure it averages out.
Subscription models
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Try DuckDuckGo instead of Google.
As for microtransactions, I dislike them too - but I think this is one area where the bitcoins (or rather a better one that's more "inflationary" like dogecoin) can find a niche. I understand Reddit uses dogecoins quite happily as "tips" [tech-recipes.com] as that currency is deigned to generate coins to encourage spending rather than hoarding. As a result, people actually spend them on little things.... like articles you appreciated.
Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
*blink* I just realized I didn't give wikipedia my annual donation. (Clicks over and fixes that.)
Thanks.
The kind that teaches (Score:4, Interesting)
I for one will be happy to pay for in-depth, impartial analysis that takes complex matters and explains them to me simply.
There are enough people out there interested in different things, there's a market there, somewhere. Regardless of that I'm sure most people are sick and tired of tabloids, newspapers with a political agendas and media moguls pushing their views.
I'll pay if you empower me with no BS knowledge and thus a real chance of understanding. Ask me, the potential buyer what I care about, what I'd like to know about and what I do not care for.
Information should be free, instead of asking how you can charge for information maybe you should consider how to monetize transferring free information? wait a moment that's call an ISP. Tax the ISP? -do you see where this is going?
So far we've all been reading what we like for free on the internet, what will your pay service do better? can you demonstrate you're giving me, the reader better value over "free!"? -if you cannot answer that question you should not bother with a pay wall. If you tax at the ISP level and they transfer costs to the customers then customer will move.
So really, what information is not easily accessible to the masses, without passes and logins? high quality research, specialist and niche information. Essentially the sort that has a very low readership and cannot fund itself on ad revenues. Someone will pay for that.
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I for one will be happy to pay for in-depth, impartial analysis that takes complex matters and explains them to me simply.
And without bias? When you find it, let me know. Tell everyone else, too. We've all been searching for that mythical city since time was time.
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http://www.sciencemag.org/ [sciencemag.org]
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I for one will be happy to pay for in-depth, impartial analysis that takes complex matters and explains them to me simply.
The problem is that many topics are not simple, and explaining them simply does not give you a fair or impartial analysis or the tools necessary to make informed judgements.
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42.
You can send payment to this Bitcoin address:
1GZVi3MQsorsF3fUc9NYD2g6yw86fDtGD5
Paid by advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not run an ad blocker, and I am fairly tolerant of adverts alongside my news. I will continue reading a site even if the entire sidebar is flashing animated gifs at me.
That is my payment.
I do block flash content, because ads with sound step over the line, and I will stop visiting a site that loads keyword ads in the text of an article, but almost anything else I consider to be a fair condition for free access to content.
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I do not run an ad blocker, and I am fairly tolerant of adverts alongside my news. I will continue reading a site even if the entire sidebar is flashing animated gifs at me.
That is my payment.
I do block flash content, because ads with sound step over the line, and I will stop visiting a site that loads keyword ads in the text of an article, but almost anything else I consider to be a fair condition for free access to content.
Welcome to the club!
lizard-brain visual heroine (Score:3, Insightful)
You haven't paid a nickel until your willingness to tolerate the advertising seeps into your psyche in such a way that causes you to behave differently in how you participate in the economy to the advantage of those who generated the advertisement stream.
Ads function on at least four levels. The first is to create dir
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There's a fifth level for ads. They create a background awareness such that when the demand does materialize, and you are presented an array of choices to satisfy the demand, you pick the advertised thing, simply because it seems most familiar. This is, in fact, one of the more powerful impacts of advertising.
Re:lizard-brain visual heroine (Score:4, Interesting)
That is incorrect. The payment you make to the site you browse is a chance to be influenced. The site thus gains an opportunity to influence you, which they sell forward to the advertizers. Whether these advertizers succeed or fail in their attempt to use their opportunity is their problem, not yours. Either way you've paid.
Think of it as selling options. The option might end up being worth something, or it might not. But even if it ends up worthless, the seller still delivered his end of the bargain.
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Nope. His time is worth money as well. Since he knows the ads dance, he occasionally looks at them. If he allows the ads, the company gets the revenue. If he doesn't, they don't. He's paid.
NYT for me, but paying somewhere is important (Score:5, Interesting)
The submitter may not think its worth it, but I've been happy with my online subscription. I like the periodic long form articles going in depth on topics that I often find interesting, the opinion articles where they actually invite several people with different view points to present their own argument (without just yelling at each other), and the general news coverage which usually doesn't get too caught up in the petty cable news fodder. (The "missing white girl of the week" stories.)
Plus I am absolutely addicted to their Numberplay feature.
But more important than any specific site, I think its important to pay for news. Research isn't free, and if we don't pay for it, who will? 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. I don't trust random bloggers to do so, because the signal would get lost in the noise, and most of us don't have time to do it ourselves.
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if we don't pay for it, who will?
Advertisers?
who ever pays for it gets to decide what goes in
You said you pay for the NYT. Do they let you determine what articles to include? Only to the extent that if they do a bad job, you won't renew your subscription. If advertisers were paying, the same would be true: they won't get eyeballs if they don't have content that attracts them.
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Apparently you're not reading enough news, if you think the NYT doesn't have an agenda to push.
If you don't notice it, you probably just agree with it.
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."
Re:NYT for me, but paying somewhere is important (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
It would be good to mention that the rich benefactor in question has been pushing up daisies for the better part of a century and so has become a bit "hands off" :)
Nowadays how the Guardian covers news and what agenda it pushes is largely determined by the journalists themselves and the editor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
The Guardian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Guardian (Score:5, Insightful)
only mainstream media to support Edward Snowden (Score:2)
Other than the Washington Post, New York Times, and several other places publishing the information he provided.
Re: (Score:2)
unfortunately the Guardian has quite a bias towards the left. If that's your thing then go for it, but if you're looking for unbiased its probably not the best.
If you're really looking for unbiased, I'd get 2 opposing papers and try to read the same story delivered by both - if you read the Guardian and the Daily Mail, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Or just go with the FT, which may not cover your story much at all, but the ones it does will be plainly factual.
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If you're really looking for unbiased, I'd get 2 opposing papers and try to read the same story delivered by both - if you read the Guardian and the Daily Mail, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
i'd suggest the telegraph as a counter to the guardian, the daily mail is just a paper for cunts
snake
Re:The Guardian (Score:4, Funny)
if you read the Guardian and the Daily Mail, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Let me represent that graphically for you
Left - Guardian - - - - - - - - - - Truth - - - - - - - - - - - Right - - Bigotry - - - Lies - - Daily Mail
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None (Score:5, Insightful)
If they expect me to pay, I expect them to bring me some original, exclusive news coverage/articles that's not easily found elsewhere for free.
Re:None (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I love Fox News. They report things you won't see *anywhere* else. Because they just make shit up.
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I find it hilarious that news corps expect me to pay them to access their sites, when all they do is sit on their asses copying/pasting shit from AP, Reuters, or Bloomberg (for financial news) like everyone else does. No wonder many news outlets (both online and in print) are tanking. If they expect me to pay, I expect them to bring me some original, exclusive news coverage/articles that's not easily found elsewhere for free.
One of our big national newspapers here in Norway recently put up a nagwall at 8 articles/week, though not every article seems to be count but since there's no clear indication this has lead me to only read what I can't get at the other 3-4 sites that usually carry the same mix of news. Even when it's not copy-pasta "breaking events" tend to be exactly the same, the number of unique in-depth articles is very low. Between home and work and smartphone (unique IPs) 24/week is plenty.
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A couple of Danish newspapers are doing the same. Just install Ghost incognito addon for chrome, hit that ghost when you get tagged by a paywall, chrome will then automatically switch to incognito when you visit those sites, clears out most paywalls.
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Most of them do provide original content. Unfortunately it's just opinion piece bullshit masquerading as news or an investigation.
Investigations cost money. When the news is broken the source that broke it gets some exposure, but since everyone else reports it as well it is hardly exclusive any more.
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all they do is sit on their asses copying/pasting shit from AP, Reuters, or Bloomberg
And just how do you think the Associated Press, United Press, and Bloomberg get their funding?
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Can't that be someone else's problem?
</tongue in cheek>
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It's impossible to to bring exclusive news coverage because let's face it: if an event is important to anyone at all, someone's live-tweeting it.
Newspapers as mere reporting devices are going to die. They can't compete with the Internet rumour mill. What they could do is go back to doing actual journalism: analyze the meaning behind events, reasons behind decisions,
STOP beta.slashdot.org ALREADY! (Score:3, Insightful)
JUST STOP THAT FUCKING THING.
NOW!
Or is nobody out there listening to what the users are saying??
Re:STOP beta.slashdot.org ALREADY! (Score:5, Insightful)
JUST STOP THAT FUCKING THING.
NOW!
Or is nobody out there listening to what the users are saying??
First thing I do is scroll down and click on the classic link. I don't mind if they move over to another platform, but please keep this layout! How difficult is it to offer both?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Use "http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1" and you'll never have to see the beta again.
Re:STOP beta.slashdot.org ALREADY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Until they stop support for classic.
BBC (Score:5, Informative)
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It's not a tax, it isn't mandatory. If you don't receive broadcast TV signals or stream live TV you don't need a TV license.
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Also, you can still use the BBC website even if you don't pay taxes,
True - the licence fee (it's not strictly a tax) is only paid if you use a TV or watch live streaming.
how do you think foreigners view it?
When you're viewing the BBC News website from outside the UK, it shows adverts (and different content).
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NPR (which I support) and the BBC were my primary net radio sources (and I listen to a lot of radio news) but the quality of the BBC reporting has dropped of, and gotten more conservative, pretty notably in just the last several months.
New York Review of Books (Score:2)
Exactly one (Score:2)
None.At.All (Score:2)
Radio, streamed or OTA, like the BBC World Service and NPR, are all I need for breaking news. For depth, when wanted, I'll research it myself.
I'm not even remotely interested in the crappola that passes for main-stream media these days.
Slashdot! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would pay for a slashdot version with >80% of articles about technology :)
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I'm amazed it took so long for someone to mention /. My first thought when reading this was "please do our market research for us".
I wouldn't pay for /. as it stands. I come here for 'infotainment', which I can happily get elsewhere, although maybe not in such a succinct form. /. lacks any really grab-you-off-your-chair news that I can't possibly live without, and lacks the editorial quality to ensure that the normal float of news is well curated. /. is a news aggregator, and so will never 'break' news as s
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And some actual by-Cthulhu editing and fact-checking.
Why the Paywall Hate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I pay for the NYT, Ars, and The Economist, although the last 2 really aren't newspapers. Why does everyone here hate "paywalls"? Running a newsroom is extremely expensive. From the beat reporters and copy editors all the way up to the editorial board, plus all the foreign bureaus with their own reporters, a "real" newspaper needs to support a ton of people. I'm also a huge fan of investigative reporting, which you rarely ever see outside of major newspapers because the paper and the reporters must invest a huge amount of time and money.
Aggregation sites are nothing like a real newspaper. But at least Ars Technica has a large amount of original content (including their great feature articles), instead of resorting to Huffington Post-style click generation with "articles" that summarize someone else's hard work.
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Not everyone here hate paywalls. But those who do will be much more vocal than those who don't.
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Not everyone here hate paywalls. But those who do will be much more vocal than those who don't.
A lot of it isn't so much paywalls as it is fear that the Internet will end up sliced and diced with toll booths every other site. Like "net neutrality", that would convert a lot of free association into having to strategise your use based on financial considerations. We've already demonstrated that people self-limit themselves to their own detriment without forcing more limits on them. And, of course, it puts an additional chill on one of the www's greatest strengths: hyperlinking into a truly world-wide w
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I will second the economist. It takes me about a week to get though the in-depth articles, which for me is a better use of my time then plowing though daily updates of most issues. Plus the subscription comes with a podcast of the magazine. That for me is worth the price of subscription.
I have some issues with news aggregateors and free sites. They do headline news well but they do a poor job on the long form articles.
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My paywall hate is the fact that the quality of the material presented does not correlate to the "cost" of registering. Out of habit, I go to SFGate often enough, but the quality is simply junk: there might be two news articles on the front page, and a bunch of human interest slide shows... for the people that can't read? I also read Seattle PI for a while, until they started doing goofy things with hijacking the browser. There are several others that come and go, but quite frankly I have no interests
The Onion (Score:2)
Economist and NYT - but with conditions (Score:2)
I currently do pay for The Economist.
I would pay for the New York Times as well if they provided cheaper pricing options. I wouldn't mind paying $10 a month to read 30 articles of my choice, but I don't like having to take a full subscription just to access the handful of content which interests me.
for international news (Score:2)
As long as (Score:3)
I'm not the one paying
Asahi Shimbun (Score:3)
We get the digital Asahi Shimbun. It gets us all editions of the full paper, including a browsable, zoomable PDF copy of the morning paper edition, at a price slightly lower than the paper edition cost us earlier.
The reason is mostly convenience: I and my wife can both access the website and the iPad and Android apps at the same time, through the same subscription. With the paper we'd get only a single copy, so I'd end up bringing yesterdays evening paper on the train in the mornings while she'd read the morning edition.
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My local paper's doing the browsable, etc. PDF online version for subs too. I won't use the thing because there's no reason to make me skip several pages to read the rest of a story just because that's how they had to lay it out in the physical medium. Browsers != newspapers.
The really stupid thing with that is I'm a subscriber, get the physical copy, but their normal HTML page doesn't let me see more than 5 or 10 pages a month... unless I block Javascript from a certain domain, which I do.
Playboy.com (Score:2)
Foreign Affairs and Stratfor (Score:2)
Also, the Economist.
In the if-they-want-me-to-pay-I-will-dept I would put the Guardian. At least I think it is worth supporting their journalists.
Any would be (Score:2)
Sadly, I know about none online news. All I can see is online opinion.
Washington Post paper (Score:2)
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.
What Online News Is Worth Paying For? (Score:2)
Dumb question - simple solution (Score:2)
You can clear your history after you hit their paywall block or you can just view in Privacy mode and then close the tab once you're hitting the paywall.
Then open a new tab and try again and it will work.
NYT does tracking using cookies and what should you do with cookies ? Eat them!
Very little until micropayments are added (Score:2)
I want to su
!Slashdot (Score:2)
Clearly the post-Taco Slashdot falls in the second category.
None of it (Score:2)
There does not seem to be a shred of unbiased, agenda-free news out there. Some would argue there has never been such. But these days, it seems to be far less than when I was younger. The consolidation of news business is more than bad enough. That government is attempting to define "news media" is worse because people are tiring of the clearly-tainted news sources and are seeking out alternatives to attempt to balance what they hear.
Even the sheeple are beginning to see that there is something wrong wi
Consumer reports (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly "News" but the only website subscription I've ever felt it worth paying was Consumer Reports. It pays for itself many times over every time I buy an appliance. It may sound lame, but my Vacuum cleaner has lasted 10 years... our dishwasher is insanely quiet... Our LCD TV has a better picture than my brother-in-laws $5000 sony and it cost us $700. Then we get into the automotive section and the sites likely saved me tens of thousands. For $20/year it's well worth it.
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.
None (Score:3)
If you mean an upfront paywall, the answer is none. The entire concept of the WWW is the synergy everyone gets sharing and linking to free content. It makes every participant far more valuable than they would be alone. Any attempt to put up artificial walls around a particular bit of content violates the entire social contract the Web operates on. You are making everyone else's content less valuable, and are inconveniencing every visitor, simply for your own personal financial gain. Essentially, you are sabotaging the Web.
This is why people get pissed off at paywalls, even though they can't necessarily find the words to explain it.
Now I realize folks have to eat, and the social contract of the Web doesn't mesh very well with a lot of old information brokers' steam-press era business models. Tough. Find a way to adapt, or go out of business. Your choice.
Back in the day, they used to say that the price of newspapers only covered the cost of delivery. Ads paid for the actual salaries of the folks generating the content. Delivery on the web is essentially free to the content producers now. If your grandfathers could figure out how to pay for the rest with advertising, I bet you can too.
The Economist, the New Yorker, the NYRB (Score:3)
I pay for The Economist not only for what it contains, but for what it lacks. There are no cat videos, no "top ten differences between men and women," no pop science fad of the day. I stopped reading the NYT because it has too much fluff, and their web design makes it difficult to find the substantive articles. Plus their "most emailed" list is just full of horrible clickbait which disappoints me every time. Really the NYT's sensationalist science/health fad reporting was enough to drive me elsewhere by itself; it made me stop trusting them as a reliable source. I know that The Economist is biased, but they are obviously biased in a particular way, not randomly careless. If I want the other side of the coin, I will read the New Yorker and the NYRB.
Also, I like the weekly format because it gives the journalists more time to write something thoughtful. As Chesterton put it:
"The tendency of all that is printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article, and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all."
PBS and NPR (Score:3)
They seem more balanced and go into more depth than the for-profits. Conservatives complain that its state sponsored liberal propaganda and liberals complain that they are becoming too conservative and caving to the right. I take this as a sign that they are doing something right.
They do so much more than news and I don't feel like I'm paying for someone to cut-and-paste AP news feeds like the other guys.
Re:What news is worth paying for? (Score:5, Funny)
Wikileaks.
Free to you but, Julian Assange is paying for it big time.
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Yeah right...
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You can't get that. Journalist are not robots, dry facts are meaningless without context, and editors have to use their judgment to par the content down to a reasonable size.
Find a source that is intelligent, in depth, aware of it's view, and skeptical of it's view – i.e. willing to be challenged, acknowledging what assumptions and positions it is making, and willing to change it's view when the fact change.