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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

I completely disagree with this statement.

I mean, I get where he's coming from (reach is reduced by imposing barriers to the article).

But on the other hand, news costs money. You can argue about how much it should cost, but journalism isn't free. Personally, I pay for 4-5 newspapers (which is too much), but after the sh*tstorm of the past three years (Brexit, elections etc), I felt that it was worth the money.

It's also a little ironic for someone as rich as Paul Graham to be arguing against paywalls (like he could pay for every news-subscription and never notice the cost).

In summation, Carthego delenda est! (or news is worth paying for, at least).

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> I pay for 4-5 newspapers (which is too much), but after the sh*tstorm of the past three years (Brexit, elections etc), I felt that it was worth the money.

This isn't a coincidence: to a large extent, the last few years haven't been THAT remarkable, but news outlets will inevitably cover things as if they're very remarkable, because that's what fuels subscriptions. See also: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

> Personally, I pay for 4-5 newspapers (which is too much), but after the sh*tstorm of the past three years (Brexit, elections etc), I felt that it was worth the money.

You don't think it is possible that those things could have been avoided if people had better access to high quality information from for example newspapers and scientific studies? Currently a majority of people don't think it is worth it to pay for quality information so they only consume the poor quality crap you get for free. I guess this situation is fine if you want to sit in your ivory tower and lament over the ignorant masses ruining everything, but if you actually want to solve the issue you should clamor for more quality information being made free because in a democracy it is the ignorant masses whose opinions actually matter.

"But it doesn't matter, those people are too dumb to understand!" you say, well totally blocking them from accessing information is a good way to ensure that the situation will never improve.

I had taken the statement as referring to scientific publications. There, the publisher isn't the one paying for the work.

(Perhaps I don't view news as having something important to say)

However, your point is interesting - sometimes you do have to charge in order to say things effectively. For example, you generally have to charge for a book to cover the cost of putting it together.

The problem with (some) paywalls is that they also advertise.

Either advertise and make it free, or have a paywall subscription model.

I get it that news isn't free. What is strange about the struggle is that in the 21st century a big news organization can have a bigger subscriber base than ever before. So why don't they? What is broken?

What's broken is what you said in your first statement: even if I pay, they tend to also advertise. I also used to pay for a number of local / regional newspapers, but me paying them didn't get me quality journalism in a single transaction, it just got me better access to click-bait a lot of the time, and I got to feel good that maybe I was kinda supporting good press. (I also had a big problem with the fact that despite only wanting a digital subscription, I still got paper copies at my house, but because I wasn't supposed to, I had no way to stop it when I left town and I was stuck with a dozen papers on my driveway when I returned - nice and safe for me. I had to resort to borderline illegal harassing behavior to get them to stop.)

There are high quality publications that I think do consistently do the original research and due diligence behind their reporting, but they're mostly just not of interest to me anymore because they're national. I'm overloaded with political stuff in my face from other sources anyway - I'm happier just not reading good commentary on it in my spare time. I find BBC is a good source of world news, but they never ask me for money..

> I find BBC is a good source of world news, but they never ask me for money..

Because they get their funding by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, who quite generously allow the rest of us to benefit from the product they paid for.

But if we're advocating state-sponsored media, remember that in that field the BBC's commitment to real journalism makes it kind of an outlier. Most state-sponsored media outlets are just propaganda mills for the regime that sponsors them.

> Either advertise and make it free, or have a paywall subscription model.

I don't understand this fundamentalism. Newspapers and magazines that charged subscription fees have also carried advertising for literally the entire modern history of newspapers and magazines. Why is it suddenly a Fundamental Rule that they can only do one or the other? Who made that decision?

Web advertising is evil. If I'm paying someone, I won't accept they imposing it to me.

Print advertising is merely annoying, and only to the extent that it's numerous. A bit of advertising in a printed media is even funny.

As long as web advertisers don't stop being evil, both situations will keep being different.

This is circular reasoning. You essentially answered the question "Why is it OK in one context and not in another?" with "Because it's OK in one context and not in the other."

To break the circle: Why is web advertising categorically evil when print advertising isn't?

My answer to that question is simple: print advertising doesn't spy on me. Online advertising does.

Keep in mind that news was (almost worldwide) already in a downtrend before the web. It's more due to low quality content and lack of differentiation by distributing the same low quality text brought from a 3rd party that everybody else.

I see some media working to recover their image nowadays, but low quality is still the norm.

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