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Please Pay for Your News
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#22On the issue of bias - I'm not confident that paid news is necessarily less biased than news that relies on clicks and ads. Two potential issues:
1) A news agency might be further incentived to publish biased, "echo-chamber" type of news if they are more effective at convincing readers to pay.
2) Detailed news with in-depth research and thorough analysis is expensive to produce, so news agencies that produce such material, if they were to rely on subscriptions, need to charge appropriately expensive fees. This means only a select group of people can afford this news. To generate more revenue, such a quality news sources are incentived to cater content to this limited audience set. Over time this can make quality news inaccessible and even irrelevant to most of the public.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#23Earlier 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.
I'm sorry if my point wasn't clear, I'm looking for as close to non-biased as possible. As I layed out in my numbered list I'm completely aware that there are no unbiased sources. To claim I don't read the news is just attacking and not really helpful to my legitimate desire to find news sources that aren't just pundits of organized interests.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#24To all of you here complaining about the ads on many news websites: Why not use an adblocker?
Seriously, reading the comments here is making me nauseous but I can't seem to stop. HN is the essence of privilege. Reporters are getting assaulted out there.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#25I tried, except, everywhere I looked, they promoted Op-ed pieces with equal billing and authority as traditional investigative reporting. Washington Post, NY times seemed liked the "best" based on track record for investigative reporting on politics and international coverage (with a US focus) but I cancelled both after a year. Open to suggestions...
Edit: Also NYTimes cancelation process is AOL levels of hostile. The Economists, less so.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#26I personally would love to pay for my news (in a sense I try to do that by regularly donating to Wikipedia as I think it's a fantastic open-source-esque news source) My trouble is the dearth of non-biased media sources. (Hacker news may be considered biased as it's often skewed for people in tech?) This might just be my inability to trust but I see multiple issues: 1. Presenting facts in any way can be seen as biased…
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.
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.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#27I 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.
While "per article" is a bit mercenary, I do admit that newspapers could benefit from a single-day fee, akin to purchasing a daily issue from a stand.
Maybe this is a problem ready for a YC solution?
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#28I 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?
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#29The thing about paid news is that they're offering a "premium" product, but that product has notable omissions. You know what I'd expect from news that you have to pay for? A bibliography. Something like (an idealized version of) Wikipedia, with a list of references included somewhere, each scoped to a particular claim—even if a reference just amounts to original research conducted by the news org. E.g. Interview wit…
So your argument is, since it's not exactly what you want, you aren't going to pay for it.
If you have to resort to putting words in someone's mouth, it's a decent hint that either your position is weak or your understanding of their position is.
To answer your question: no, that's not my argument.
Re: Please Pay for Your News
#30As difficult as this trade-off for business is, I prefer to financially support journalism that isn't compromising its values by using third-party ads. The journalism that rejects advertising is the virtuous journalism that most deserves our dollars.
I don't see local news media as likely to find a way to operate without at least some advertising revenue at any time in the next decade, at least.
I pay to support some ad-free journalistic endeavors, but I also pay to support a local newspaper that is the ONLY thing keeping tabs on our city council, county officials and so on. Pro Publica is great and even the Intercept has its moments, but neither of them are coming to my town or county and doing that local work.