It is not my responsibility as a potential customer to subsidize a company's business model, regardless of their product, even something as noble as news. If a company cannot stay in business, they deserve to die. That is the nature of evolutionary free markets.
Please Pay for Your News
101–110 of 123 posts
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#102If a business has to beg customers to pay, maybe they should step back and re-evaluate the value that they are purporting to offer and the methods with which they are offering it.
You are so right. Charities have to beg customers to pay too. Maybe they should step back and re-evaluate. Actually, here's an even better idea -- let's just kill the poor. Think of how much money that would save.
This is a bad faith argument, based on a slippery slope. Your other comments seem to be similar. Familiarize yourself with HN rules before commenting.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#103I would be prepared to pay per article. I am not eager to subscribe to any particular newspaper. I want to consume media "a la carte", not "all inclusive". Unfortunately, newspapers wants me to susbcribe and here we are.
Do you ask for per-movie pricing from Netflix?
We’ve been asking for ala cart cable pricing for a long time.
Netflix is pocket change and my family gets more value from it than anything other subscription besides trash and recycling.
I’d pay 2x as much for reliable, newsworthy, and succinctly written coverage that clearly separates fact from opinion.
As it is now, I don’t fully trust any news organization.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I think I would be happier trying to find a pay for a news source that focuses more on synthesizing information. Obviously there is no unbiased anything (#1 of my list is explaining exactly that). What I'm looking for are sources that intentionally try to get all sides of the issue, what are those sources? Obviously reading NPR/Forbes/Guardian are not really those kinds of sources in many cases.
The problem with getting "all sides of the issue" is that that process itself is highly susceptible to bias. If there was an article about vaccines, should the news organization solicit opinions from antivaxxers? These are mostly uneducated fools who reject scientific consensus because it makes them feel a modicum of control, not because their anti-vaccine stance has any medical or societal merit whatsoever. Where do…
I think for me the all sides thing is more so to hear all the opinions, even if invalid. For example, if I want to learn about a philosophical or scientific topic I like that I can go to Wikipedia and see all the different sides of it just to even know what positions people have on the topic at all.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unbiased news does not exist. To get a good appreciation for the real "ground truth", one must accept bias exists and seek several opinions on a given issue, from different outlets or sources.
Absolutely this. "I'm looking for unbiased news" is a standard line by people who do not read the news.
Agreed, unbiased news is an purple unicorn. Unbiased news is a person who has never had a racist thought in their life.
Sure there are different degrees of bias, some sources are definitely biased to the point of being far to much work to see through the bias, but others reliably have decent articles amongst their less decent ones. And who’s to say that the articles I feel are decent aren’t just the ones that most alight with my biased views.
Unbiased news is not physically possible. Holding out for it is to hold out for something that is literally impossible to happen.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#106The future of "news" is in podcasts & yt. I follow plenty of people who are doing well for themselves with a Patreon account + some premium content + public channel providing knowledge & news in their area of expertise, often very in-depth.
It's not only medium that is different.
People don't trust institutions anymore. They don't want to buy "New York Times" or any other brand, and pay for the office, shareholders, CEOs. They want small independent teams / individuals that they can connect with, trust and hold personally accountable. Someone that feels like they are working for their Patreons.
When you cut the bloat, it takes just a thousand patreons to support a creator on some salary-like level. Even less, with ad revenues etc.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#107I’m not paying for news because I want to see the current model of news die out.
It’s opinionated, biased, and heavily edited. When the news gets back to factual unbiased reporting I’ll consider spending money.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#108I would be prepared to pay per article. I am not eager to subscribe to any particular newspaper. I want to consume media "a la carte", not "all inclusive". Unfortunately, newspapers wants me to susbcribe and here we are.
Do you ask for per-movie pricing from Netflix?
No but I rent movies from Google Play. And I don't subscribe to Netflix.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
But "advertising" today is a twisted caricature of sponsorship models of years ago. Advertising, like "location services" has become a two-way surveillance system. I would love to be able to have a system of payment where we could pay a small amount of money for high-quality journalism? (and do it actually anonymously)
Unless someone kickstarts a system like that, which would be insanely high startup cost with insanely high risk, the way to actually get to what you are talking about is for a lot more people to pay for the news, so eventually they can stop relying on advertising.
Another way is to boycott news with advertising so that they're forced to find a model that doesn't rely on it. Why is advertising the only choice here? Why do you assume they'll drop that revenue stream when they "get enough subscribers"?
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I think I would be happier trying to find a pay for a news source that focuses more on synthesizing information. Obviously there is no unbiased anything (#1 of my list is explaining exactly that). What I'm looking for are sources that intentionally try to get all sides of the issue, what are those sources? Obviously reading NPR/Forbes/Guardian are not really those kinds of sources in many cases.
The problem with getting "all sides of the issue" is that that process itself is highly susceptible to bias. If there was an article about vaccines, should the news organization solicit opinions from antivaxxers? These are mostly uneducated fools who reject scientific consensus because it makes them feel a modicum of control, not because their anti-vaccine stance has any medical or societal merit whatsoever. Where do…
To use your example, I think it is important to know that antivaxxers exist and what their arguments are. This way you dont get surprised when certain events happen that were inconceivable based on your bubble. Fundamentally, the purpose of (non-editorial) news should not be to convince you. It should be to shine a light on things as they are and the converstations ppl in the real world are having.