3 ms·

Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription? Good, freely accessible, and ad-free press. You can only choose 2. The economics of

Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription? Good, freely accessible, and ad-free press. You can only choose 2. The economics of journalism are tough.

djaouen 11mo ago
> Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription? I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol
- mystraline 11mo ago
  > I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol You misspelled capitalists. They are the ones who are fucking you, me, and anyone with money.
lynndotpy 11mo ago
The economics are rough, but there are many which offer all three. E.g.: NPR's text site: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/
- bhasi 11mo ago
  Wow, this is great. It's like Hacker News/Old Reddit for news.
- ViscountPenguin 11mo ago
  Public funding is kind of a cheat, but if we're gonna include them, I'd like to spruik that the ABC still technically has functional rss feeds: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-feeds/ https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-... They're no longer officially supported though.
Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
PBS News Hour is all three. :(
- dingnuts 11mo ago
  the reason they got defunded is because many people do not agree
SoftTalker 11mo ago
Strangely we used to think nothing of paying for a daily newspaper (which also contained ads) and many people subscribed to news magazines as well.
- DrewADesign 11mo ago
  Yeah. This is the tech world making everything better. Sure the news is biased, poorly-written garbage, but you can have a lot of it, instantly, for like no money!
  - xp84 11mo ago
    The Internet is not devoid of good quality media. Yes, some of it you have to pay for. The free papers we had before the Internet were never bastions of great journalism (though I'll admit that national TV news once was once pretty decent, and free). And all news is biased. The only thing is, you can only see the bias towards your ideological enemies. When it's your bias, it's called "the truth."
    - DrewADesign 11mo ago
      No — free media has almost always been substandard. The tech world essentially lowered the bar for all media. I pay for good media.
- ipaddr 11mo ago
  Have you tried going back 80% ap articles, some opinion columns, classifieds and sports with a lifestyle section. We are living in an era of more news, different formats more in depth. I think our expectations are misaligned we expect everything to be one click away and social media to present it to us in a doom scroll. The articles shared just here on hn you would never find in a newspaper. If you are lucky you discover a zine like phrack or 2600 and wait months for the next issue.
  - xp84 11mo ago
    I read the newspaper, just like you described, in the 90s and 2000s as a kid. It was really interesting and valuable. Honestly, yeah, that sounds amazing.
golem14 11mo ago
I wonder if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is actually a good media diet. I mean, I wonder if I will be OK just reading this (and maybe HN) and not suffer irreparable harm :)

Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription? Good, freely accessible, and ad-free press. You can only choose 2. The economics of journalism are tough.

djaouen 11mo ago

> Are you going to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a subscription? I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol

mystraline 11mo ago
> I would have, if this planet didn't f*ck me over yet again with crippling poverty lol You misspelled capitalists. They are the ones who are fucking you, me, and anyone with money.

lynndotpy 11mo ago

The economics are rough, but there are many which offer all three. E.g.: NPR's text site: https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/

bhasi 11mo ago
Wow, this is great. It's like Hacker News/Old Reddit for news.
ViscountPenguin 11mo ago
Public funding is kind of a cheat, but if we're gonna include them, I'd like to spruik that the ABC still technically has functional rss feeds: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-feeds/ https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/abc-news-australia-rss-... They're no longer officially supported though.

Wowfunhappy 11mo ago

PBS News Hour is all three. :(

dingnuts 11mo ago
the reason they got defunded is because many people do not agree

SoftTalker 11mo ago

Strangely we used to think nothing of paying for a daily newspaper (which also contained ads) and many people subscribed to news magazines as well.

DrewADesign 11mo ago
Yeah. This is the tech world making everything better. Sure the news is biased, poorly-written garbage, but you can have a lot of it, instantly, for like no money!
- xp84 11mo ago
  The Internet is not devoid of good quality media. Yes, some of it you have to pay for. The free papers we had before the Internet were never bastions of great journalism (though I'll admit that national TV news once was once pretty decent, and free). And all news is biased. The only thing is, you can only see the bias towards your ideological enemies. When it's your bias, it's called "the truth."
  - DrewADesign 11mo ago
    No — free media has almost always been substandard. The tech world essentially lowered the bar for all media. I pay for good media.
ipaddr 11mo ago
Have you tried going back 80% ap articles, some opinion columns, classifieds and sports with a lifestyle section. We are living in an era of more news, different formats more in depth. I think our expectations are misaligned we expect everything to be one click away and social media to present it to us in a doom scroll. The articles shared just here on hn you would never find in a newspaper. If you are lucky you discover a zine like phrack or 2600 and wait months for the next issue.
- xp84 11mo ago
  I read the newspaper, just like you described, in the 90s and 2000s as a kid. It was really interesting and valuable. Honestly, yeah, that sounds amazing.

golem14 11mo ago

I wonder if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is actually a good media diet. I mean, I wonder if I will be OK just reading this (and maybe HN) and not suffer irreparable harm :)