RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

RadioShack could make a comeback if the Heathkit resurgence ever comes to fruition: http://www.heathkit.com/

They should partner with them!

I think paywalls are reasonable good way (from consumer point of view) to bring in money, although I realize that it probably would mean scaling down for many major publications. The LWN model might be the ideal balance point; recent items are subscriber-only, older stuff is free. That should work even better for WSJ style publication where I'd assume most people are more interested in breaking news rather than week old stuff.

I can understand where the anti-paywall sentiment stems from. We have been conditioned for over an decade to get free news from web. Meanwhile piratism has become mainstream and anti-copyright movement has grown, both which have changed peoples ways of thinking about value of information etc. Some might also think paywalls to be exploitative bait-and-switch tactic, which admittedly might be true in some cases.

Of course there is stark difference between supporting paywalls as a concept, and supporting posting links to paywalled content to places like HN (or reddit or /. etc), because you are kinda doing some "viral" marketing for the publication and dividing the community to those who subscribe and those who do not. That will inherently limit the communitys ability to discuss the content.

It's about time - the RadioShack I grew up with died years ago.

write an article about it. and please don't call online news vendors the papers

> Out of curiosity, since several comments here complained about the paywall ("paywalls are nsfl"), and an equal number or more on HN run adblockers and/or openly dislike ads in general (the whole "you are the product" meme), how do you think newspapers should monetize?

I adblock aggressively, and I don't think it's my capitalist duty to watch ads for products in order to create wants for products I don't need.[1] I'm very bothered by the idea of being "nice" to a site by watching ads. I don't want to help a site by watching ads; that's supposed to help a third party by creating a need in me to buy something, not the website I actually care about. I much prefer cut-and-dry paywalls or donation buttons.

Thus, I'm fine with newspapers having paywalls. If that's what sells, let them paywall everything. It's their prerogative. However, there are also plenty of unpaywalled sources. At the moment, most news can be obtained from the web without paying, and I doubt that this will change. I don't have a solution for the news industry, but guilting me into watching ads will never work.

Paywalls for academic journals are an entirely different problem, since in many cases the journal "editors" are in fact rather parisitic and contribute nothing but prestige, while the actual work is done by others and is unpaid. Those paywalls are terrible. But you made something and you don't want me to see it until I pay? That's fine.

[1] And I almost never "need" anything. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." If I need something, I'll know it. I don't need ads to tell me what to need. I therefore find the entire premise behind advertising pernicious. Only when I want to buy something, I'll look at ads, so until I actually have a need or want to buy something, don't shove ads down my throat or guilt me into watching them.