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PSA: Newspapers educate the public, and their services are essential for the functioning of our democracies. The best newspapers fund their operations through s
by another_poster 5y ago
PSA: Newspapers educate the public, and their services are essential for the functioning of our democracies. The best newspapers fund their operations through subscriptions, so please help society become well-informed by subscribing to your favorite newspapers.
- DeWilde 5y agoTrue, but if a newspaper is open for bots to help promote it through SEO, I won't have many qualms about bypassing the flimsy paywall.
- pier25 5y agoWe need a better solution than subscribing to a monolithic news source. Specially when they make it super hard to unsubscribe cough NYT cough.
- jrockway 5y agoYou can subscribe through your phone, so then Apple is in charge of cancelation. You can link your accounts and still view things on the desktop website. (I think they also have bundles to make it non-monolithic, but that probably doesn't translate to your desktop because... that would be too convenient.)
- pier25 5y agoI don't have an iPhone and 99% of the times I read news on desktop...
- NikolaNovak 5y agoOh man; I was going to support the GP post, but then I remembered what unsubscribing from The Economist was like, and my mouth is filed with Bile & my brain is filled with pure sheer hate.
- ok123456 5y agoThey made it so difficult to unsub, I just waited until the credit card expired. I vowed never to pay for a news subscription again. Big mistake.
- _jal 5y agoYeah, I refuse to resubcribe to them or the Times. If the only way these ailing news orgs* can survive is by being manipulative jerks to people trying to stop paying them, then let them burn. * Neither the Economist nor the Times is ailing
- wrycoder 5y agoQuestion: how do you unsubscribe on Substack? Answer: <click>
- wrycoder 5y agoHow about a group subscription on Substack, distributed to the authors based on the log of the number of page views?
- pier25 5y agoSo like a Netflix of news?
- jmckib 5y agoWashington Post lets you cancel through their website without talking to anyone. It's also significantly cheaper than NYT last I checked. I'm a subscriber, and I think it's a pretty solid paper especially for national politics coverage.
- gxqoz 5y agoI subscribed at one of their cheap rates last year and didn't find much in it unique from other sources I'm already subscribed to.
- jmckib 5y agoWhat other sources are you already subscribed to? I'm always looking for recommendations.
- gxqoz 5y agoLots of stuff. For "pure news" New York Times, Seattle Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian. Lots of somewhat more general interest subscriptions also have news angles like Slate Plus, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Harpers, Literary Review, ProPublica, New York Magazine, some Substacks. I realize this is a lot (and is only a partial list) but pretty much all of these listed ones have various interesting pieces I wasn't finding anywhere else. Whereas WP felt very "cable news" to me, just giving article after article on the latest stuff happening at the White House. I can get that elsewhere and am already not interested in most cases.
- mardifoufs 5y agoIn my experience, the Post is basically New York Post/Fox News tier when it comes to the outrage baiting. Sure, a lot of those articles are in the "opinion" section, but even then, the lines between the opinion/news sections are almost non-existent at this point. The comment section is also beyond toxic; it's filled with unhinged conspiracy stuff but from the blue side. At least the New York Times, as much as it's flawed, still has a much better "normal news" section and it's opinion section isn't filled with the most outrage baiting low tier tribal articles. Its international coverage is miles ahead of the wapo, too. The WP is cheaper for a reason.
- yupper32 5y agoI pay for NYT, but I can't subscribe to the paper of every article I want to read. I need some kind of group subscription for it to be feasible.
- zdw 5y agoAh, the NYT that helped justify the US invasion of Iraq based on falsehoods? That NYT? Edit: Explanation - the "I subscribe to the NYT" as a pat response to funding news sources puts far too much power in the NYT's hands, and they've proven to be less than trustworthy in the past.
- ______-_-______ 5y agoI can't say if the NYT are villains or not, but if they are, you might have better luck convincing people if your only data point wasn't from literally decades ago
- willcipriano 5y agoTo be fair the war lasted up until a couple of months ago.
- mint2 5y agoAfghanistan and Iraq are different btw.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe war on terror encompasses both Iraq and Afghanistan.
- mardifoufs 5y agoThe NYT helped push both wars.
- munk-a 5y ago
- dimitrios1 5y agoPSA: (National) Newspapers incite rage for clicks and revenue generation, and serve as a propagandizing arm for our beloved 3 letter agencies. Their services are essential for ensuring the success of our neoconservative war hawks in Washington to continue to fund their war machine with hundreds of billions of dollars while neglecting more pressing matters like our nation's crumbling infrastructure and completely unaffordable healthcare system. So please help society by becoming a well-informed citizen, and taking everything someone is trying to sell you as the truth with a heavy grain of salt.
- stusmall 5y agoThis doesn't really hold up in a conversation about paywalls. Clickbate generated ad revenues isn't typically from sites funded by subscriptions. Subscriptions actually help fight that.
- AlwaysRock 5y agoThis isn't really true. Almost every major newspaper posts op ed, letter to the editor, or opinion pieces that are often clickbait. They are okay with it because it gets views, and they can say, "Oh that was just an opinion piece, not our actual views" if it goes sideways.
- colpabar 5y agoIt’s not just clickbait though. If the US wants a war, chances are most mainstream news organizations will all agree. If the US wants to expand the surveillance state, most mainstream news will tell us why it’s necessary. If the US wants to deregulate, most mainstream news will tell us how that regulation was actually hurting the economy. I’m tired of the “good news is worth paying for” argument. I don’t disagree with that idea, but I think it’s time for a lot of the mainstream news organizations that people suggest I pay for to die. They had their time, things have changed, and they are failing to adapt. Let’s try something new.
- fma 5y agoWait...so news orgs are bad but good enough to read if it's free? If they truly are bad you need a site blocker, not a paywall bypasser. Trying something new would be starting up a news org, not coding a paywall bypasser. People should just admit that they are cheap.
- z3c0 5y agoFair enough, but I often wonder if this new arrangement in the availability of quality information will cause any problems for the lower class. A lot of political rhetoric does gear itself towards the poor, after all.
- another_poster 5y agoAgreed, I think it’s currently causing problems in the US. In theory public media like PBS and NPR should address the gap, but those organizations tend to depend on donations from the wealthy, so their coverage skews towards their interests and conversational style. I think the government should provide newspaper subscription vouchers to the poor.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoPrint media subscriptions are some of the best money I've spent. No bullshit, few unobtrusive ads, no tracking, no distractions. Supporting free press.