3 ms·

It's ridiculous how much they want to charge for an article. Some won't even sell single articles and want a monthly or annual subscription to see everything th

It's ridiculous how much they want to charge for an article. Some won't even sell single articles and want a monthly or annual subscription to see everything they produce. I don't want to see everything. I'm not your sheeple. I can't afford to buy 5 or 20 annual subscriptions. I want to read articles from a variety of news sources. I want to pay $20 for 10 articles and be debited for the ones I view. If that takes me 3 days or 3 years to view 10 articles, that's what I want. They will make more money selling articles at a reasonable price than they will selling annual subscriptions full of crap people don't want.

apercu 2y ago
Right? I could buy the entire f*cking Sunday paper for $1.75 and spend three hours reading it on Sunday morning, and take a fun article to work on Monday. I miss those days, though it was probably a huge waste of paper and water. Although the industry actually provided jobs back then. If you simply let me read TFA for $1 or $0.50 I would do that 5 or 10 times a month. But I guess capitalism says that they would rather have 1 person pay $100 a year than 2500 people pay fifty cents once a month.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  That's badly outdated pricing data. The daily edition of the New York Times now runs $2 at a news stand, best I can make out.[1] Sunday costs $5 in NYC, $6 elsewhere. Note that the print Sunday edition was (and is) massively underwritten by advertising, which comprises the bulk of the issue, 60--90% by column inch or weight. ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://www.travelizta.com/how-much-is-a-copy-of-the-new-york-times.html https://www.travelizta.com/how-much-is-a-copy-of-the-new-yor...> isn't a particularly impressive source, but it's the best I can find. I cannot find a newsstand price for the Times anywhere on the paper's actual website. Which is another gripe I've got generally: for a commercial product, pricing data are exceedingly difficult to come by.
  - t-writescode 2y ago
    Their point remains.
    - mhb 2y ago
      No it doesn't. He could subscribe to the online NY Times and get ALL the articles for every day (including Sundays) for less than the cost of printed Sundays alone. So what's the missing element? Taking a fun article to work on Monday?
      - t-writescode 2y ago
        Their argument was: > If you simply let me read TFA for $1 or $0.50 I would do that 5 or 10 times a month. The subscription is a major contributor to the problem. Also, NYT does the tricky "change the price to $25/mo after 6 months" game.
        mhb 2y ago
        He says two things. My reply was responsive to: "I could buy the entire f*cking Sunday paper for $1.75 and spend three hours reading it on Sunday morning, and take a fun article to work on Monday. I miss those days..."
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      I was addressing the price specifically. I do have fond memories of reading the Sunday Times all day, and for much of the next week. On that I'm in agreement. I'll add another useful feature of both newspapers and more especially magazines. When you were done with the damned thing, you could pick it up and dispose of it ... trash, recycling, reuse as fishwrap or firestarter, take your pick. Rather than leaving a litter of individual browser tabs which are painful to collect and discard (even using tools such as Tree Style Tabs), the format was an aggregation itself. What was harder of course was to maintain an archive of items of interest. That's not a primary role of publishers however, and many news sites have paywalled their archives (this strikes me as ... shortsighted), broken links, or both, which should be familiar frustrations to many. I'm not sure how OP is really responding to the questions of how to fund and provide access to news and journalistic content, however.

apercu 2y ago

Right? I could buy the entire f*cking Sunday paper for $1.75 and spend three hours reading it on Sunday morning, and take a fun article to work on Monday. I miss those days, though it was probably a huge waste of paper and water. Although the industry actually provided jobs back then. If you simply let me read TFA for $1 or $0.50 I would do that 5 or 10 times a month. But I guess capitalism says that they would rather have 1 person pay $100 a year than 2500 people pay fifty cents once a month.

dredmorbius 2y ago
That's badly outdated pricing data. The daily edition of the New York Times now runs $2 at a news stand, best I can make out.[1] Sunday costs $5 in NYC, $6 elsewhere. Note that the print Sunday edition was (and is) massively underwritten by advertising, which comprises the bulk of the issue, 60--90% by column inch or weight. ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://www.travelizta.com/how-much-is-a-copy-of-the-new-york-times.html https://www.travelizta.com/how-much-is-a-copy-of-the-new-yor...> isn't a particularly impressive source, but it's the best I can find. I cannot find a newsstand price for the Times anywhere on the paper's actual website. Which is another gripe I've got generally: for a commercial product, pricing data are exceedingly difficult to come by.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  Their point remains.
  - mhb 2y ago
    No it doesn't. He could subscribe to the online NY Times and get ALL the articles for every day (including Sundays) for less than the cost of printed Sundays alone. So what's the missing element? Taking a fun article to work on Monday?
    - t-writescode 2y ago
      Their argument was: > If you simply let me read TFA for $1 or $0.50 I would do that 5 or 10 times a month. The subscription is a major contributor to the problem. Also, NYT does the tricky "change the price to $25/mo after 6 months" game.
      - mhb 2y ago
        He says two things. My reply was responsive to: "I could buy the entire f*cking Sunday paper for $1.75 and spend three hours reading it on Sunday morning, and take a fun article to work on Monday. I miss those days..."
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    I was addressing the price specifically. I do have fond memories of reading the Sunday Times all day, and for much of the next week. On that I'm in agreement. I'll add another useful feature of both newspapers and more especially magazines. When you were done with the damned thing, you could pick it up and dispose of it ... trash, recycling, reuse as fishwrap or firestarter, take your pick. Rather than leaving a litter of individual browser tabs which are painful to collect and discard (even using tools such as Tree Style Tabs), the format was an aggregation itself. What was harder of course was to maintain an archive of items of interest. That's not a primary role of publishers however, and many news sites have paywalled their archives (this strikes me as ... shortsighted), broken links, or both, which should be familiar frustrations to many. I'm not sure how OP is really responding to the questions of how to fund and provide access to news and journalistic content, however.