> I'll pay if you let me pay per article!
Future you:
"I'll pay once you stop ripping me off for individual articles!"
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When I was a teenager, somebody told me that thieves always criticize the person they're stealing from.
Still seems true.
Future you:
"I'll pay once you stop ripping me off for individual articles!"
----
When I was a teenager, somebody told me that thieves always criticize the person they're stealing from.
Still seems true.
In a pay-per-article model, you’ll have to pay for the article before you read it, so there’s no telling whether its any good (even more incentives for clickbait). And their current model is exactly that (pay $x for 12 articles); I apparently spent my free articles this month, and barely had a decision in the matter — lead their by HN, and wasn’t paying attention (or rather, tracking) which host I was visiting, with nothing more to inform value than HN comments and the headline. And I’m sure most people don’t get the HN comments.
You can’t properly skim the magazine before purchasing; all you can do is pay up despite lacking information, or not read that article/newsgroup, or steal it.
But you can’t make an informed payment. And most of the news media has dropped any interest in building trust
> they’ll put out a single decent article a month, and you’re currently required to subscribe to everything to read it.
> But you can’t make an informed payment.
It sounds like you are informed about this publisher, but simply don't think it's worth it to subscribe to them. That's fair, but it's not a valid reason to infringe on intellectual property rights.
I fail to see how allowing readers five or so free articles a month fails to give you a proper way to evaluate whether a subscription is worth it.
"I already read so much great content that people find interesting that they TRICKED ME into reading"
What's the theory here? If only you knew which articles would be out in 2 weeks you'd better be able to budget your free reading?
Serious question: what's the threshold at which youre willing to part with $10/month?
If I wasn’t going through a content-aggregator, then the only filter I’d have is the title, which is just incentivizing clickbait, and the same issue arises.
As for the threshold question, it depends on trust. I have no issue shelling out cash for (older) nautilus, though content-wise it got me nothing, simply because I had trust that future issues would be (just as) decent, and the print format was nicer.
Same with LWN; it offers me little content-wise (just wait a week, and you’ll get the same thing free), but they’re consistently decent, so I’m fine with ponying up for the week ahead of time.
But economist, nytimes, fox, quartz, etc are much less consistent, and a random selection of 12 articles, or a monthly collection, and you’ll probably get a good deal of trash in there. The good articles are probably better than LWN, but the bad ones are worse, and I have no trust that I’ll get much, if any, value from subscribing.
I shouldn’t have to go to HN for article curation (at least in terms of quality, ideally it should just be subject); I want to pay economist to curate for me, and they’re not doing it. Or rather, they’re doing a poor job of it, and I don’t want to pay up for a poor job done.
A newspaper has two jobs:
1. Put out the news
2. Curate the news and writers
Afaik, they’re generally only managing the first one. On the latter, its a crapshoot.
Not being much of a gambler, I don’t have much interest putting actual money into that crapshoot.