I really dislike ad driven publications. I’m not opposed to paying for quality news publication, but for something like NYT, there’s only a couple articles a month I come across that I’m really interested in reading. There problem is that there’s 4-5 other paywalled publications where I have that same issue. I’m interested in their content, I just can’t justify the subscription price for the small amount of content from them I’ll actually consume, and I really can’t justify paying subscriptions for 4-5 publications at once.
I would pay $5-10 a month for a news aggregator for paywalled publications. It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles, it could be opened up to independent writers as well (e.g. integrate your substack with it). Maybe even an additional fee that includes digital magazine publications as well.
I can’t imagine it would be worse for the industry (unlike Spotify), as it already seems like journalism/news is hovering above collapse. They would be making money off of people who weren’t providing revenue previously.
It should be noted that, in the US at least, your library card will often give you online access to many publications.
My entire state has access to NYT, Chicago tribune, USA today, a ton of other popular newspapers and our local newspaper through their libraries for free.
Time for a library card.
This. Is. Exactly. What. I. Wish. For. A. Very. Long. Time.
Nowadays every news site has paywalls. I’m willing to pay for good work, but if I pay a single news provider, I’m missing too much. Nobody is willing to pay for every publisher. Even if an article is just a few cents I neither want to be annoyed with the payment process nor do I want to manually keep track of how much I spent for news in a month.
We really need a platform providing a news flat rate, aggregating most larger publishers.
No they can fuck off with the charging me money to read their article thing. I would prefer that they load that shit up to the gills with ads that I then block
I’m not exactly an expert, but I doubt the newspaper gets paid for blocked ads.
Nope you’re spot on, of course they don’t. Something something ability something something need, gating information except to those who can afford to support their organization should classify them as something other than news media.
Bruh newspapers were never free.
He does have point, though. People who can’t afford to pay for information shouldn’t be left out.
Which is why public libraries get newspaper and periodical subscriptions.
You’re right. To me, libraries are were books live, so I forgot about the newspapers.
I mean they’re free now if I pirate the shit out of them
Yeah so when you’re done soiling yourself, the rest of us will be having a grown-up conversation about keeping news sustainable and accessible.
Where does quality news come from if people aren’t willing to pay for it?
Clearly people are willing to pay for it. NYT is profiting 50 million a year.
My buck a week isn’t going to have any impact on whether or not they can run the paper, I can’t fathom making the argument that someone who can’t afford to contribute to the already massively successful paper should have zero access to it.
Ask for fucking donations Wikipedia style, and share the information for free.
I mean this isn’t exactly the answer you’re looking for but in the UK we do, the BBC doesn’t have ads and the cost is covered by taxes rather than paying a “Spotify premium” subscription
I recently found ground.news. it is an interesting news aggregator sight in that it combined multiple sources for each story. It doesn’t really answer some of your needs but for each story it shows you which sources are pay-walled and which ones aren’t.
Omg this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I do a lot of media monitoring for work and have been using MBFC to try to measure how reliable my current Google Alerts are, because it throws up some weird and wild news sources.
You’re use of spotify as an example is a good reason. Journalism isn’t making money and Spotify’s royalties are (or at least were not long ago) the lowest amongst the music streaming services. The ads on their own sites pay a lot more than any aggregator would give them.
Isn’t news free though?
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It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles
This is idea behind the BAT token and the Brave Browser¹. Unfortunately it won’t break through paywalls, but ad blocking is pretty good and in theory is less guilt.
¹ although, there is this
I agree the convenience would be great. But the reason it’s rare is that the business model does not work out for the newspapers.
This would lead to reduced revenue for the newspapers.
We already live in the world where news is behind paywall and disinformation is free. This would lead to collapse of more newspapers and further deterioration of the landscape.
We need a better model than Spotify to apply to news.
What, something that keeps removing features?
