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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

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Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#121

Post by lazaroclapp »

dustinmr wrote: post #107
lazaroclapp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, assuming you read 20 or so online newspapers at least occasionally, this has you keeping $200 a month of subscriptions, of which in most cases you will read a 2 or 3 articles a year because they ended up HN news or some other news aggregator you actually use. This is even true if you only subscribe to relatively reputable traditional news sources, btw. Here are 12 that individually are worth it and mo…

Seems to me, as readers, we're less in need of 'Netflix for news' and more in need of either consolidation or decentralization in journalism. I have much less brand loyalty now than say 10 years ago. I have less respect for both the WSJ and NYT than I did. I don't think their incentives line up with mine anymore, and it leaves me without a news source I trust the way I once trusted both of them. A larger entity that…

That all might be true, but I am still not sure the solution is simply being subscribed to a single very credible newspaper. That still means a single editorial line and no ability to share (links to) articles between people. It seems like an artifact of an old medium of distribution. When you had to get a bunch of pages at your doorstep, it made sense to have a single "provider" that bundled the news and analysis for you and decided what you got.

Now a days what we have is: individual journalists/teams that investigate and produce analysis, aggregators like HN or Reddit who point our which content is interesting/relevant and traditional media outlets which mostly serve to vouchsafe to some degree that the content is factual and credible. We can't get rid of the last component because we end up with no way of distinguishing real news from propaganda, disinformation and innuendo, and also because we haven't found a way to directly pay the first group except through the media orgs. A fully centralized system that certified news "accuracy" is the stuff of Orwellian fiction, though, so that's a non-starter. You could have a federated certification system, I suppose, where articles are published by individual journalists and then groups and institutions vouchsafe for the veracity of stories or the record of the journalist (sort of like TLS CAs or a web of trust of journalist peer review), but you still need to come up with a good way to pay all of the parties involved. That said, in principle, I'd rather pay for each individual article, or a monthly fee for access to nearly-all the articles available, than for a subscription to a very specific collection of articles in the way you do now with news subscriptions.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#122

Post by xg15 »

grzm wrote: post #21
Animats wrote: post #20

Paywalls have been tightening up recently. The Washington Post now has stronger anti-ad-blocking. So do the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times is still accessible. It's a concern that the newspapers which have actual reporters in the field are disappearing behind paywalls.

Actual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes. Sure, people might share a few papers at the office or at a restaurant, but having access like we've had for the past 20 years or so is pretty remarkable. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely…

> The idea of free access to news is relatively recent

Recent or not, it's an extremely important idea.

That said I agree with others that the real problem might be that no one so far is willing/able to replicate the kiosk model on the web.

Imagine if the only (legal) option to consume a physical newspaper were via subscription. Sounds absurd? It's just as absurd on the web.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#123

Post by elcapitan »

fovc wrote: post #79
oconnore wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of buying internet points for someone who figured out a little hack to access journalism, maybe you could instead pay for journalism?

Can't reply to taek, but https://blendle.com/ lets you pay per article. There's an HN sign up code somewhere but couldn't find it on my phone

This. Has been my solution for most "major news outlets with paywall" in German for quite some time now. It has a couple of English papers as well (could be better, though).

You can even get your money back when reading accidentally (guess that doesn't work 10 times in a row, but it's a good feature).

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#124

Post by [deleted] »

pascalxus wrote: post #4

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done i…

[deleted]

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#125

Post by oskarth »

pascalxus wrote: post #4

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work. but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done i…

While I agree, it is probably a case of not being in their target market:

- Average age: 40+

- Average household income: 250k+

- Average household net worth: 1.5m+

From http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/2016_WSJcom_....

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#126

Post by int_19h »

sgt101 wrote: post #92
bonniemuffin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how I want to support journalism & consume news. I don't want to commit to a single source of news, but I'm happy to pay per use.

But this is another layer of intermediation without value add - these people are basically journalist taxing, and isn't this another place where smart folks are effectively deciding what other people want to read?

If there's no value add, then why are people using this service? It's not like it has exclusive access to all those articles.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#127

Post by anotheryou »

sethhochberg wrote: post #80
Taek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A noble thought. My problem comes not from the fact that I don't want to pay but rather from the fact that it's super annoying. What if my browser could just say "article will be 25 cents?" and I could say y/n? But instead, I have to sign up for a service, hand over my credit card, blah blah, and now you've wasted enough of my time that it was worth just me stealing it. I'm pretty convinced it's just aUX thing.

See, I look at this the exact opposite way - if I have to decide whether each individual article is worth paying for, I'm probably not going to read any articles. Its much easier for me to pay $10 a month and know that I can, with zero friction, read whatever article I want from the publications I respect. We're talking about the Wall Street Journal here; odds that they're going to only occasionally publish something…

So check the "automatically pay everything below 30 cents" setting in your browser payment add-on or subscribe to the advertised flatrate shared between publishing houses (like spotify).

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#128

Post by amelius »

fovc wrote: post #79
oconnore wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of buying internet points for someone who figured out a little hack to access journalism, maybe you could instead pay for journalism?

Can't reply to taek, but https://blendle.com/ lets you pay per article. There's an HN sign up code somewhere but couldn't find it on my phone

Imho, the solution should not involve a middleman. We don't want a single party gatekeeping our news.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#129

Post by fauigerzigerk »

anigbrowl wrote: post #41
mark_l_watson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link! I just signed up requesting a beta invite. $0.25 per article, with an instant refund sounds fair. I have wanted access to The Economist, etc., but not enough for a full subscription.

The Economist is the only news organ I have consistently found to be worth subscribing to, despite its faults. The stuff in it that you think you're not interested in is almost invariably worth knowing about.

I had a subscription to the Economist for years and was reader for much longer, but the content has gotten much worse and they insist on displaying video ads right in the middle of articles even if you pay for a subscription.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#130

Post by arjie »

raldi wrote: post #59
pzh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Guardian is doing something similar but without tracking the hours spent. They just say "Hey, we see you spend a lot of time around here. Why don't you help us out a bit so we can stay afloat?"

I feel like that's missing the sine qua non of the idea. You gotta remind people that, like, "You're read the equivalent of five novels here this year!"

I fully predict that the first one that does that will be decried on HN as the NSA. The hordes of privacy cargo cultists will descend upon it like a pack of angry wolves.

Before anyone claims that I'm being derogatory and dismissive of privacy claims, I'm claiming there's a loud minority of people that create a PR problem for companies by complaining about insignificant things.

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