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Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

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Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#101

Post by MrMetlHed »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #5
bombcar wrote: post #2

"Reuters.com will remain free for a preview period, but will require users to register after five stories. It is not immediately clear when it will begin charging." Reuters reporting about Reuters in the third person is amusing. "We asked ourselves when we would begin charging but we didn't know."

I used to work at Reuters (last century) - in technology, but had occasional contact with the news side. They would treat it as a badge of honour to be the first to publish stories about Reuters - however embarrassing. There was no possibility of interference by management. I don't know if that's the case now or how many other publishers would live by those rules.

Still the case! (Journalist at Reuters)

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#102

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

baby-yoda wrote: post #26
tyingq wrote: post #19

I wonder at what point Google needs to pay attention to this. If a large number of websites are behind registration or paywalls, then the chance that any individual person searching would have a subscription (or registration) to any individual news site is pretty low. People might have some small number of subscriptions, but not for many sites. So, why keep returning search results that the end user can't use without…

could not agree with this more and this has gone on far too long. why does google allow this? as you say it is 100% cloaking to have the entire article indexed but not present it in the subsequent page. Sure, publishers feel they need paywalls for revenue purposes; have at it. That should not absolve them from the "rules" everyone else has to follow. Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or…

Pretty sure it's fear of it being added to anti trust complaint.

It is really frustrating as a user, and undoubtedly Google knows this. So an impending lawsuit is the only reason I can see for them not blocking nyt/other sites that do this.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#103

Post by mindcrime »

m000 wrote: post #84
mindcrime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, somebody really needs to solve the micropayments problem for real. I have no problem paying for content, but there is no way in hell I'm paying $35 a month for a Reuters subscription just to read one or two articles a month. And same for NYT, WSJ, yadda, yadda, yadda. I mean... if we all paid for monthly subscriptions for every news site we read a couple of articles a month from, we'd be paying $600 / month jus…

Micropayments are the way to go. But as the intermediate solution, I would be in favor of (non-expiring) credit-based microtransactions. E.g. you buy $20 of NYT credit. After that, it is $.25 for a single article I'm not very fond of the tiered plans as you describe them. They are like the child of the unholy union between fast-food and gym marketing tricks: Would you like us to oversize your subscription from 15 to…

I'm not very fond of the tiered plans as you describe them. They are like the child of the unholy union between fast-food and gym marketing tricks: Would you like us to oversize your subscription from 15 to 40 articles for only $3? Wouldn't it be a huge inconvenience to pay us every month? Why don't you set up a recurring fee instead? But of course you will be reading 40 articles per month for the foreseeable future!

That's a fair point. And I definitely favor a real micropayments option in the long-run. But I could settle for a tiered plan in some cases as an interim step, especially if the only other option is the "unlimited plan" which just doesn't (in most cases) make sense for my usage patterns.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#104

Post by dredmorbius »

mindcrime wrote: post #50
tyingq wrote: post #22

"audiences prepared to pay $34.99 per month for a deeper level of coverage" Holy crap...who is this audience? NYT is $4/month, WAPO is $4-6/month, etc. Edit: Ah, okay, intro pricing that shifts to ~$17/month after a year. Still, though, that's half of this proposed pricing.

Yeah, somebody really needs to solve the micropayments problem for real. I have no problem paying for content, but there is no way in hell I'm paying $35 a month for a Reuters subscription just to read one or two articles a month. And same for NYT, WSJ, yadda, yadda, yadda. I mean... if we all paid for monthly subscriptions for every news site we read a couple of articles a month from, we'd be paying $600 / month jus…

Micropayments have a 50 year history of consistently and precisely perfectly failing to work.

The grail you seek is not the holy sort.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#105

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

amelius wrote: post #24

How long until we get SciHub for news?

There is already Archive.is to bypass paywalls. You wait until someone with a subscription archives the site (no more than a few hours for NY Times articles, for instance), and then you can read the archived copy after entering the URL.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#106

Post by MikeUt »

nojito wrote: post #41
zpeti wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my very personal opinion, based on the New York Times this isn't necessarily a good thing. Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage. (and Fox is just as bad, but its not an online publication for the sake of my point)

>Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage Equating one of the premier news organizations in the world with Fox is quite interesting. NYTimes has been breaking news stories since the Civil War. They are the only organization that routinely breaks news against 'both sides' of the aisle. e.g. Clinton Email server and Trump business ties to name a couple The fact of the mat…

> They are the only organization that routinely breaks news against 'both sides' of the aisle.

Both sides indeed. They report on news of national importance, such as a playground scuffle:

A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim...

Once it turns out the story was a hoax, they do their journalistic duty and remove any reference to race from the title:

Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytim...

I wonder if they would have reported on it at all if victim and perpetrator were reversed, or featured race so prominently. But if they were reversed, the story would not be important to the national conversation, would it?

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#107

Post by leephillips »

gpm wrote: post #87
leephillips wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are cloaking, can we get around the paywall by using the Google crawler user agent string?

Huh, I thought they published a range of IP addresses they used to prevent this, but apparently they don't use an entirely consistent one and you need to do a dns request [1] to actually check if something is google's crawler. I'm willing to bet most organizations aren't doing that... so maybe. [1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/...

I just installed a user agent switcher and tried it on a prominent financial news site. The offer to subscribe was replaced by the article when I reloaded using the Googlebot user agent.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#108

Post by dredmorbius »

rectang wrote: post #27

Although it's regrettable that Reuters' content will be harder to access, it's a positive trend for the news ecosystem to generate increasing revenue through a subscription-based business model rather than selling ads. The more money that comes from subscriptions, the more that news coverage will reflect the interests of subscribers rather than advertisers.

Subscriber-based access excludes the overwhelming majority of possible readers.

Amongst the most successful subscriber paywalls is that of the New York Times, boasting about 5 million paid subscribers.

Given about 130 million US households, this means that 96.67% of the country's households lack access to this source.

And before any comments on the merits or failings of the source in question, again this is among the most successful and widely used subscription paywalls extant, and it excludes over 95% of potential readers.

The exclusion cost is absolutely immense.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#109

Post by culot »

tootie wrote: post #88
FqOD4xih7Uq6m9Z wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Fox never had one of their Pulitzer prize winning journalists writing literal propaganda handed to them by the Soviet Union to cover up the Holodomor.

Lol, Fox has never won a Pulitzer and for good reason. They run propaganda in prime time every single night. Roger Ailes was a bona fide conspiracy nut: https://www.axios.com/john-boehner-book-ted-cruz-fox-news-a1... NY Times has been in operation for 170 years and has made a few mistakes. There is just no comparison. They are best news source in the country bar none.

>They run propaganda in prime time every single night.

All major news outlets run propaganda - not just in prime time, but all of the time. That is their job. The NY Times does have the privilege of being one of the primary establishment press outfits, resulting in their main aim being setting the tone for propaganda outfits around the nation and throughout much of the western world.

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing inside the FBI or CIA, the NY Times is where you go.

To compare them to Fox is pointless, as Fox does little to no print journalism. NY Times excels in [often overly-]lengthy, well-written articles, whereas I don't think Fox has ever done much more than briefs and blurbs.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#110

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

While I understand the need for revenue, the end result now is that rags that put out conspiracy garbage is widely accessible to anyone with an internet connection - Breitbart, Fox et al.

Sources with a relatively objective viewpoints are going behind paywalls.

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