News Paywalls Debate

Pay for a subscription, then. Journalism isn't cheap.

begin off topic rant:Dear bloomberg, ny times and other major news outfits.Please sort out a decent micropayment solution that works on all news sites without hassle.I'm willing to pay you a couple cents to read articles linked to by HN and other aggregators. However, I will never subscribe because I'm not interested in the other 99% of your content.end offtopic rant

I wish it didn't have to be that way. I like reading what the NYT publishes, just like how I enjoy Salon/WSJ/Forbes/WashPost/etc.. I just wish it wasn't "all or nothing". Why do I need to subscribe for $15-20/month so I can read the one article I really wanted to read from HN? I don't have time to sit there and enjoy that subscription, just isn't the kind of time I have, so could I just have like a lite version somehow that lets me pay for w

"It's called subscribing to your local newspaper"This won't support, or get you access to, the overwhelming majority of articles, though. It's as if each musician required their own, independent monthly subscription."The NY Times costs something like 33 cents a day, for example."Newspapers can, and will, quietly double their prices without telling you and then make it very hard for you to cancel. See my article on the Boston Globe, for example: <a href

Nowadays I can't even go to news websites so I get my news primarily from HN, Twitter, or Reddit, where news is condensed and I rarely get to see the other point of view (in other words, good journalism).Obviously I understand they need to make money, but at the same time most of the news articles even posted to HN have some limit to reading (even with JS blocked). Maybe a student pass would be good for students like me. I don't think I'll have a problem paying for them... but

You may have read all your free articles for the month. The NYT is a paid subscription newspaper but they offer a handful of articles a month for free.If you enjoy the NYT and read it often, think about subscribing.

I am a paying subscriber for the New York Times . If you can afford it and you find yourself running over the amount of views, you should consider subscribing as well. Actual journalism (as opposed to only recycling news and posting opinions ) as done by nytimes, wpost, wsj, New Yorker etc. is an expensive enterprise, but one that is hugely important to our society. (This particular article however is of course not an example of actual journalism and probably not worth the click)

$15/mo is just an example, but I would pay even with an article count restriction per publication because I don't constantly read the Times, I just go to various outlets on who seems to have the best story.

Many news sites limit readers to a few articles before throwing up the pay-wall. Usually that means paying $$ for an ongoing subscription (/m, /y). Maybe if you could make a /d or /w micropayment? You've already had an opportunity to sample a few articles so know what quality to expect.

Have you tried Blendle? It's pay per story and has all of the major paywalled news sources.It also allows you to get a refund after reading an article if you think it was clickbait.Articles are $0.09-0.50 in my experience.