People used to pay ~1$ for a newspaper. Now everyone expects it for free.
The issue is that the Internet has so many sources of information, whereas there used to be just the few newspapers at the local store, or the one delivered to your house.
With ad-blockers there is even less money being generated for online papers.
So what's the solution? What is the method by which reporters get paid for their work? I have some ideas, but I think they've all been tried.
That being said, I'm with the commenter, I'd prefer non-paywalled content (but I also want to see good reporting be rewarded).
So what's the solution? What is the method by which reporters get paid for their work? I have some ideas, but I think they've all been tried.
Eventually there's going to have to be some kind of cable TV-like syndicate that aggregates a bunch of paywalled periodicals and charges you a monthly rate for access to all of them.
They would pay $1 for a newspaper. On HN, every day you have links for about 10 different publications, each requiring a subscription. That's more like paying hundreds of dollars to read the same number of articles for which you used to pay $1.
Right, but the point is that saying "people used to pay $1" is misleading here. Besides, I would still complain if a meeting club required you to purchase a subscription to dozens of publications. Of course, it wouldn't have to, because people used to read news articles aloud and pass newspapers around, whereas now that's considered Theft.
When reporters do some actual work, like with the FT, I am happy to pay for a subscription. The FT is pretty reliable in term of the quality of information and that has some value.
Most newspaper were merely rehashing and commenting news agencies releases. I think the internet just revealed that they were adding very little value.
You seem to have read enough FT to reach that conclusion. In my case, since FT didn't let me read enough articles free, I didn't realise its value (assuming it is valuable), so I don't pay for it. Catch-22.
The Economist and NYT, by contrast, have loose enough paywalls that I've read enough articles to conclude that they are both high-quality sources.
I seem to recall the classifieds and ads paid for the reporting. But anyway, we used to subscribe to the local paper until recently. They used to scam us by telling us our subscription expired before it really did (we used to mark it on Google calendar) and playing games with the pricing until we eventually had enough.
