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I often read Nautilus too and never pay them anything. Moreover, I run an effective ad-blocker, uBlock Origin, so the little they may have derived from my visit

I often read Nautilus too and never pay them anything. Moreover, I run an effective ad-blocker, uBlock Origin, so the little they may have derived from my visits that way evaporatwes. I am very conflicted. I love consuming quality journalism online. But there is no way I'd be able to subscribe to every site I visit – off the top of my head I regularly read The Register (UK), Economist (UK), The Atlantic (US), The Grauniad (UK), Nautilus (US), The Intercept_, and quite a few more … Maybe I should just disable ad-blocking on the quality news-media sites I visit. However online ads are just so _ugh_. They destroy the reading experience in a way print-media ads don't. They load in unusual places, they contain animations or audio, they track me (what the hell?), they may contain malware. It wasn't so bad back in the day but there came a point when it was just easier to install an ad-blocker and blanket ban them rather than to vet them on a site-by-site basis. It's why I like podcasts. Ads there are read out by the host. It's not jarring. They can even be fun they way someone like Bill Burr does it. They don't track me. It shouldn't be my job to figure out for online text-media how to package their advertising in a way that doesn't repel their audience. How about a consortium for advertising solely in quality news-media? Set standards. Feature the benevolent ad promise prominently. Communicate your standards. Have a way for ad-blockers to have a switch for Content R (Responsible Ads). If they can't make that happen then the only alternative would be some kind of way would be to bundle news media together (a la Spotify for diverse labels, and Netflix for diverse studios) and let me subscribe monthly to a swath of online titles. Kind of like how I get access to a whole host of journal publishers via my university's subscription channel. Otherwise … To re-iterate, I can't afford to pay a subscription to every news org I visit online. I won't disable my ad-blocker until quality news media and advertisers figure out together how to deliver appropriate, responsible, and vetted advertising alongside their quality content, just an static image in an appropriate place, not repeated with no fancy CSS or JS. Maybe (you have every right to argue) that if I can't afford to pay and won't disable my ad-blocker then I should be deprived of the content by a paywall. And I say, fair enough, if that's what the solution turns out to be – I'll go back to buying print media. Is there no halfway house by which my browsing/consuming could be subsidized by responsible advertising thus increasing readership? Are others in the same boat as me? I'd love to know. How can we make our voices heard?

bonaldi 9y ago
> I regularly read The Register (UK), Economist (UK), The Atlantic (US), The Grauniad (UK), Nautilus (US). This is basically three monthly magazines, one fortnightly and a daily newspaper. That’s a fraction of my load in the days of print — I was regularly getting eight or nine magazines a month, on student money. I don’t want to make assumptions about your financial situation, but your argument is one I hear a lot — “I can’t afford all that!” - even from well-paid people. I don’t think it is a case of “can”. People certainly can afford to pay their regular reads. I think the problem is more that people’s expectations have been changed to expect media for free, and maybe carry a load of 2-3 subscription charges a month for things like Spotify or cloud services. This is a big, big expectation change from eg the 1990s.
- igravious 9y ago
  > I was regularly getting eight or nine magazines a month, on student money. How much are you spending monthly now may I ask? The difference is this. If I buy a CD or DVD then I can make copies, consume them on the device of my choice (with suitable transcoding and loading), I theoretically have them forever. With the new model once I unsubscribe from my movie or music cloud service I no longer have access. All I'm doing is renting. For that I don't expect to pay as much, I get no physical media, I no artwork. Totally different model. I would be prepared to pay a reasonable amount every month for one each of journalism / movies / music – I think that's fair. I'll purchase the physical media of the bands I love, the directors/actors/franchises I love, the print/journalism I love† – there's not a hope in hell given my current situation that I could subscribe to six or seven or more print outlets. † I forgot to mention The TLS – I guess if push came to shove I'd subscribe to The TLS, The Economist, and one other, perhaps it might even be Nautilus.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    For online news sources that you pay for, you could just print to PDF the article after you've read it. Thus you would not be 'renting' the right to view it, but would have a non-expiring offline copy too. As long as you don't then redistribute the PDF, I can't see people getting too upset about it (until Web DRM is baked directly into the browser controls, and printing becomes blocked)

bonaldi 9y ago

> I regularly read The Register (UK), Economist (UK), The Atlantic (US), The Grauniad (UK), Nautilus (US). This is basically three monthly magazines, one fortnightly and a daily newspaper. That’s a fraction of my load in the days of print — I was regularly getting eight or nine magazines a month, on student money. I don’t want to make assumptions about your financial situation, but your argument is one I hear a lot — “I can’t afford all that!” - even from well-paid people. I don’t think it is a case of “can”. People certainly can afford to pay their regular reads. I think the problem is more that people’s expectations have been changed to expect media for free, and maybe carry a load of 2-3 subscription charges a month for things like Spotify or cloud services. This is a big, big expectation change from eg the 1990s.

igravious 9y ago
> I was regularly getting eight or nine magazines a month, on student money. How much are you spending monthly now may I ask? The difference is this. If I buy a CD or DVD then I can make copies, consume them on the device of my choice (with suitable transcoding and loading), I theoretically have them forever. With the new model once I unsubscribe from my movie or music cloud service I no longer have access. All I'm doing is renting. For that I don't expect to pay as much, I get no physical media, I no artwork. Totally different model. I would be prepared to pay a reasonable amount every month for one each of journalism / movies / music – I think that's fair. I'll purchase the physical media of the bands I love, the directors/actors/franchises I love, the print/journalism I love† – there's not a hope in hell given my current situation that I could subscribe to six or seven or more print outlets. † I forgot to mention The TLS – I guess if push came to shove I'd subscribe to The TLS, The Economist, and one other, perhaps it might even be Nautilus.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  For online news sources that you pay for, you could just print to PDF the article after you've read it. Thus you would not be 'renting' the right to view it, but would have a non-expiring offline copy too. As long as you don't then redistribute the PDF, I can't see people getting too upset about it (until Web DRM is baked directly into the browser controls, and printing becomes blocked)