Newspaper subscription experiment
tedunangst.com
tedunangst.com
The "morning briefing", which gives me a brief summary of key news items to go with my morning coffee, alone would have been worth the $3.75 a week.
Had none of the issues OP notes on getting an annual subscription - and at the NYT price point, I'm ashamed it took me this long to pay for good journalism.
Independent of what rag you support, if you don't currently pay for journalistic work, please consider doing so. The dollar figures are minimal and constitute a tremendous boost for the Fourth Estate.
https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8U939.h...
Also those mini crosswords in the NYT app are pretty fun.
Another option is Blendle, which lets you pay per article. I don't know how many news orgs they have so far, though.
I could probably afford it too, but I guess the reality is I just won't pay for journalism. The value proposition is just too low given how easy it is to find this stuff around already.
Google News might be my solution here. Maybe that means I read Telegraph for one thing and NPR for the next, but that's not a big deal - they're decent enough to do the job and you can pretty much get any PoV you want using reddit comments these days.
The Times is still among the most trusted sources for in-depth coverage; their perceived slant might be due to the topics they choose to put more focus on.
I'd have assumed the latter, if The Guardian weren't mentioned (or posted) here so frequently. (And I'm not aware of any other Guardians.)
[0] - https://thetimes.co.uk
AP and Reuters themselves are good too (even if you're typically used to reading about them as a source rather than a direct publication).
PBS and CSpan are good but underfunded. Other US news is too biased and full of pro-US propaganda which gets tiresome in a hurry. Plus if I wanted to read unverified "anonymous's sources" or "report: <some other publication>" I'd just read Reddit comments or Tweets. Unfortunately that's largely what US "news" is these days, unverified facts and others repeating those facts until they're true.
Otherwise WaPo has been good - but obviously slants to D.C. politics.
I have and will continue consuming my news for free. If an institution like the NYT dies because people don't support it financially then I'm ok with that. Someone else will take their place with a model that works.
The UK has the BBC financed by tax payers, so it's kind of the wrong example.
The end result is not too different from this:
https://www.popehat.com/2017/01/19/how-to-read-news-like-a-s...
I'm asking because your process could equally be used by someone very well informed, and someone who had managed to misinform themself severely.
The latter being due to cognitive errors where they lacked enough information to form a valid judgment, and Daniel Kahneman's "What You See Is All There Is" process silently filling in the gaps. I see this frequently in people overtly skeptical of the media.
But on the other hand, skeptical people are also often correct, as the media warrants critical reading.
Perhaps you think I'm trying to average out what everyone says as if the truth was always in the middle? That could scarcely be further from the truth. Especially in politics, both sides are lying, though perhaps to different degrees and neither side is true. Thus, I separate facts from opinions and look for which items can be corroborated. So if someone is reporting that X said Y, I would look for a video of exactly what X said and see it directly.
One example that comes to mind simply because I did a lot of legwork just to see who was telling the truth is when I was told by CNN that it was illegal to read Wikileaks [1] and that there was essentially nothing to see there except some metaphorical sausage being made. Then I find out that this isn't true [2], and that Chris Cuomo is a licensed attorney who one might think would know better. [3]
Then I find out that they were exposed in Wikileaks, cheating on the debates. [4] I also heard claims that the emails were altered. [5] The claims of alteration are later proven false because the email referenced in [4] has a DKIM signature, signed by both 1e100.net (Google) and hillaryclinton.com which provides cryptographic non-repudiation. It also explicitly covers the body of the email--note the 'b' and 'bh' parameters in both DKIM signatures, clearly visible when you 'view source'. It's well known that CNN terminated their relationship with Donna. As far as I know, however, nobody ever figured out who she got the questions from, so presumably they're still there.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A
[2] https://www.popehat.com/2016/10/17/no-it-is-not-illegal-to-r...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Cuomo
What I meant is that people frequently find truth locally, but miss a lot of larger context because of narrow focus.
For instance, those videos and articles are about Clinton's emails. A lot of people analyzing that issue determined, correctly "Clinton made mistakes in email management".
The error there would be to think, without examination "Trump would be better at document security", or to hold the slightly more nefarious belief "therefore, clinton is the worse choice on document security". They're the same statement, of course, but cognitively the second one makes the believer less likely to notice they only examined one half of the equation.
The media more or less ignored Trump's data security practices, so there was no opportunity to raise the question if you only do media analysis. It's a comparison you have to do on your own.
Now, given the revelations about discussing classified documents in the open with u secured cellphones at mar a lago, it seems likely Trump is worse on data security.
This was something I think was possible to figure out before the election.
So, if you held the following belief, congratulations:
"Clinton has made errors in data management, but I have no idea if Trump is better and this has no impact on my comparison" or
"Clinton made errors, but based on other external evidence Trump may well be as bad"
But if you left things unexamined, you may have fallen into a trap. Both youtube channels you linked are Trump supporter channels. Did you analyze them as well? (In that case, the question to ask is not "is this video footage real, but instead "why am I seeing this footage at all? What do they want me to conclude?"
To more concretely state the error I'm worrying about: many people exercise skepticism only with regard to the mainstream media, but then are fairly credulous when dealing with alternative sources.
And for what it's worth, I don't watch CNN. But if you had told me they said if's illegal to read Wikileaks, I would have said "that's absurd, there's no such law".
I have a background of political knowledge and context that lets me make that judgement. My worry when I read people expressing skepticism of mainstream sources is that they frequently lack that context, and are vulnerable to being right on a few details and wrong on the larger picture.
As for who is better on document security, I wouldn't go down that rabbit hole to begin with. Have you read Assange's rationale for creating Wikileaks? The gist of it is that creating a leak culture raises the cost of conspiracies. This means that it's more difficult for any small group in power to plot against the public. So it's not really about document security, but closer to the opposite: to promote leaks so that nobody can control the flow of information.
So it's not about Trump or Clinton or any such short-sighted political machinations, but rather to ensure that nobody can get away with conspiring against the public.
It doesn't matter if the conspirator is Hillary or Flynn or whoever else. The point is to ensure that everyone is accountable. You can see how much this is hated by both sides these days, each calling the other hypocrite when they decry leaks against themselves. You can also see how those in power hate this from the Todd & Claire site, which I've seen very little press regarding.
Speaking of that, it's funny how a bunch of people on different continents coordinate with a sham of a porn site / UN "partner" to frame someone as a pedophile, but it barely warrants any mention, no? You read a lot of news, no? How much coverage have you seen? How much do you know about that? Doesn't it seem like a rather odd thing to ignore?
Current US political news is sucking up all thr oxygen. So there's a lot of stuff I imagine I'm not hearing about.
The site itself was fake. The profiles were clones of each other, the images were mirrored images harvested from the web (to hide from reverse image search, but they weren't that clever because the mirroring was obvious).
The whole thing was basically a scam to make out JA as a pedophile, after which they ran off claiming to have been threatened. However, no part of the story held together.
Given how much work went into framing someone as a pedo and it got blown up publicly, it's kind of weird that it never hit the news.
This right here is why PayPal won online payments. They're extremely consumer friendly. One button cancellation, no fucking around. I don't even bother going to sites any more, I just open PayPal and hit cancel.
I basically won't work with anything that's not PayPal or Bitcoin these days due to hassles like this.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have any experience getting their credit card company to cancel all future payments to a company? Is this easy to do?
Certainly not as simple as on online form though.
(I have a card, but am not otherwise affiliated with them.)
For example, people regularly cancel cards or move and assume "the gym will figure it out" only to discover two years later that that $20/month bill is now a $600+ bill and they're being hounded by a collections agency.
Credit scores make this even more risky (if you care about such things).
Example: if you stop your gym membership with PayPal, the gym's membership system will either be notified that your membership has been cancelled, or they will do some periodic check to see who has an active membership and update from that.
If you stop your payments going through on a credit/debit card, it's essentially the same as having no money in your account, or your card being stopped because it's stolen. There's no communication back down the channel, you just can't bill it. As a result your membership starts to go into the red, which is usually allowed for a period because of payment issues. When they contact you with a bill months later they have every right to claim that money because you never ended the membership and could have been using the gym during that time. It is usually only through wanting good customer satisfaction that they might waive the fees for that period.
The only time it worked was when I was on the phone with the lady telling me that my card had expired. They wanted lots of proof I had cancelled (which was impossible, because their damned site didn't work, and it only worked the one time I was on the phone with the person... funny that).
If anyone is wondering, that company was Megapath, which bought out Speakeasy, a once-good ISP. I would never do business with them again. Ever.
Bitcoin is still at the point where having it in your checkout process will confuse most people for most consumer sites, which means decreased conversion, and lack of take-up.
PayPal require large amounts of capital to be held as collateral, which has a significant impact on the cash flow of a business, and can make it essentially a non-starter to work with them.
By all means limit to those if you value the UX highly enough, and I agree that they have a great UX in some ways for consumers. But do realise that it cuts out entire categories of companies.
Even Google I now pay via PayPal - a few businesses who can't for legal reasons do business with PayPal or for trust reasons (ie: chargebacks cost them big as their side of the deal is irrevetsible) like game key sites I do via Bitcoin.
What companies are cut out like this?
edit: spelling ;-)
That does not appear to be true.
> Exempt Organizations include charities or certain non-profit organizations, organizations engaged in political solicitations or surveys, or Sellers or Telemarketers that call ONLY consumers with whom they have an established business relationship or from whom they have obtained the express written agreement to call.
I absolutely agree that quality journalism is essential and should be paid for. But aim higher: In addition to subscribing, try to find a funding method that actually will work in the long run. Specifications, in no order:
A) Journalists have sufficient funds to do quality work, earn a decent living, and attract talented, dedicated people to the profession.
B) Journalists can speak truth to power and to an angry Internet mob. They are free from influence by their funders, to a great degree.
C) The quality work is as widely distributed as possible. This is essential: If only subscribers can read it, then only tiny portion of the online world can benefit and it's not part of the public conversation. Instead of the Internet dream (very achievable) of distributing valuable content effortlessly, we're back to the old days of it being available only to a few subscribers and everyone else subsists on 'fake news'.
It's a question that's been asked many times, but so far nobody has solved it (and specification C is usually ignored).
> The Scott Trust was originally created in 1936 to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/the-scott-trust
2. https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/oct/24/scott-tru...
I get social media is how the results of journalism get distributed, but what funds the journalism itself if traditional news/media companies go out of business? Is twitter or facebook going to fund investigative journalists? What's the business model for a company looking to pay people to research and write about things if 'social media is the new journalism'? Do we rely on non-profits/donations?
Or are you proposing we'll get all our news in a decentralized manner via people posting what's going on around them?
Why? Because high-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and in some ways most gratifying job I ever had.
I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes that American monoliths as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs, pursuing the task without compensation, training, or for that matter, sufficient training to make public officials even care who it is they're lying to or who they're withholding information from.
Indeed, the very phrase 'citizen journalist' strikes my ear as Orwellian. A neighbour who is a good listener and cares about people is a good neighbour. He is not, in any sense, a 'citizen social worker'. Just as the neighbour with a garden hose and good intentions is not a 'citizen firefighter'. To say so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and firefighters."
- David Simon
"You do not, in my city, run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at city hall,
or in the courthouse hallways, or in the bars where police officers gather..."
One example process: local governments dish out taxpayer money to pseudo-independent "service organizations". Those organizations use part of these funds to buy advertising in local media and on public transit agencies. Those media, in turn, do flowery reporting on those local governments and soft-pedal police violence and union corruption, resulting in situations like "The Riders" in the Oakland Police Department[0]. This is too often the circle of modern urban "journalism". And that's without even addressing the issue of predatory corporate behavior by publishers themselves[1].
The broader point: modern, for-profit media are exactly that -- for-profit businesses. Their fiduciary duty is to maximize shareholder value. Objectivity and honesty are orthogonal to short- and medium-term profit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_v._City_of_Oakland
[1] http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/05.29.97/spanish-pre...
On the other hand, despite his cogent comments on the value of professional reporting, he now occupies himself as a television writer and producer. Make of that what you will.
There's no reason to thing a firefighter would do anything other than their job, there's no obvious reason for a bias.
A uneducated social worker, much like other medical/psychological workers, is a dangerous thing, so many require licences.
What licence requirements are there for professional journalists? I see plenty bad stats/reporting in journalism, so nothing that prevents that.
Indeed, if you ignore economic news, political journalism seems to be better done by biggish professional entities. But they don't seem to have any other niche remaining.
Also, the GP claim about "social media", well, if you listen to it and hear "Facebook", it's certainly wrong. We badly need a better platform. But that does not open the niche to journalists.
I'm all for supporting alternative means of journalism, but there will be a huge, huge vacuum if these large newspapers fail.
What stops any such institution fleshing out the details, then only showing those that support their narrative?
You need accountability to get quality, You also need transparency to get accountability.
Nothing. I certainly wasn't suggesting that these large newspapers are infallible or immune from bias. That doesn't alter the fact that the reporting they do is important, though.
I'm all for supporting local news but if I want quality journalism on a nationwide / global topic I'm not heading to my local paper.
To then cancel it, I had to make a call and stay on it for half hour. I still can't figure out who's coming with these hackneyed marketing "solutions" at media houses.
I've concluded the same about informational media such as books, magazines, music. If I'm paying attention to it and getting value, it's generally worth paying for and not agonizing about the price.
Newspapers all have digital departments, yet you can only cancel your subscription by calling a phone number...
From a european view, I think this should be regulated: enable the same channel used for easy subscription also for easy cancellation.
Although honestly, not shocked by anything here.
Nobody measures the lost repeat business due to these retention strategies because most people don't look beyond the current fiscal year.
Either way, i'm just a pessimist, going digital isn't easy for any legacy company and it's clear they're all struggling.
I think this type of interaction might make sense for a different type of customer. I imagine people who are getting the physical version of a newspaper might be older or less tech-savvy so the "bad old way" of waiting in a call center queue on hold might be what they are expecting instead of a fancy complicated web interface.
By analogy I trade money for code, and I won't sell code to you (nothing personal, just can't), so you can wonder how good my code is, but it doesn't really matter because I won't sell you my code regardless of its quality level.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/conflic...
I actually vastly prefer the FT website to NYT/WP/WSJ, but would very much appreciate the prompt US-centric news feeds. I know it's Euro-centric and Britain-based, so I wanted to ask.
I actually do like a bit more Europe/World coverage.
I don't subscribe to FT, though - I barely finish The Economist each week.
That and all the great updates on OpenBSD development!
But already have there product wide available in Netherlands and Germany
It's worth checking out if you have a separate email for things like that.
I subscribed because I like the paper and the newsstand in my building closed. But the process is bizarre -- They only let you subscribe in weird increments of weeks vs. months. Then you get what they call "bonus" weeks, but the outcome is that the billing system ends up double-billing you for up to one week, and you can't predict when the bills will come.