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Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

reuters.com

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Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not call Reuters neutral. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

The “controversies” section in the Wikipedia article doesn’t point to any coherent bias in Reuters or deliberate organization-wide ideological judgments. I am really not sure what you are trying to say other than “one of the largest news agencies in the world has made mistakes” which... ok? It is true that Reuters tends to hew towards US-centric conventional politics and sometimes has problems with politically-biased…

> Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#82
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If subs-only model improves reporting and rids the pubs of propagandizing, I’m all for it. The price we pay now for free news is too high -click bait, us vs them, persistent shallow dives into inane subjects is taking its toll.

> If subs-only model improves reporting and rids the pubs of propagandizing, I’m all for it. Yeah, if.

I'd argue it would increase bias, since now they need to cater to their audience even harder.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#83
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple News+? I know it's not necessarily the most popular or well thought of, but it's the only widespread platform (I'm aware of) that provides that kind of service for the price point I'm wiling to pay; i.e., Netflix-ish monthly fee.

I'm essentially an Apple Fanboy but I've tried Apple News + a few times and I just don't like it. It spends too much time trying to suggest stories, bother me with news, there's ads I can't block, etc. so I just don't use it. Leave me alone! I don't want your suggestions. I don't want to discover new content or follow some trend. At least sequester those things off to some tab or setting or something.

I'm with you on those downsides, they all bother me too. The value add for me is that I get access to publications I'd have to pay separately for otherwise; e.g., WSJ, Wired, etc. My use case is primarily to open it and navigate to the content I want under the Subscriptions tab.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#84
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 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 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!

It's all gain for the sellers. But from the customer's perspective, one still has to give their credit card number, and may still end up paying for content they won't use.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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/...

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#88
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#90
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If subs-only model improves reporting and rids the pubs of propagandizing, I’m all for it. The price we pay now for free news is too high -click bait, us vs them, persistent shallow dives into inane subjects is taking its toll.

Do you think the average man is going to rely on a news provider like Reuters after this change? My father reads a lot of third party news but actually fact checks on Reuters. A lot of friends and colleagues skip third party news and read directly from Reuters, because it is free. With this change, I doubt a great many of them will continue with Reuters as a source, and would rather stop at a third-party localized ne…

> Reuters provides facts, and very little opinion.

It's perfectly possible to provide facts in a highly opinionated way. The world we live in is a messy smear of mostly-contradictory evidence [1], so media can influence perceptions enormously by being selective in its reporting of that evidence.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAy7jujW4AAHhuu?format=png&name=...

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