If you don’t have newspapers, who are you becoming “well-informed” from? Journalists do the work of combing over government press releases, financial data, sourcing, interviews with relevant parties, etc. If they aren’t doing this, who is? The thing is, all of the more partisan news outlets whether Fox or Jacobin, get their base facts somewhere and if it is not their own reporters doing the grunt work, they are sourcing the actual base “facts” from the reporters you don’t seem to recognize.
I’m tired of the “good news is worth paying for” argument. I don’t disagree with that idea, but I think it’s time for a lot of the mainstream news organizations that people suggest I pay for to die. They had their time, things have changed, and they are failing to adapt. Let’s try something new.
If they truly are bad you need a site blocker, not a paywall bypasser.
Trying something new would be starting up a news org, not coding a paywall bypasser.
People should just admit that they are cheap.
/rant
I vowed never to pay for a news subscription again. Big mistake.
If the only way these ailing news orgs* can survive is by being manipulative jerks to people trying to stop paying them, then let them burn.
* Neither the Economist nor the Times is ailing
Answer: <click>
I called their support asking if this is a known type of ad that they do for paying subscribers. It seemed like a bug, so thought they'd want to dig into it. They told me that this is indeed a thing they do, and that I am not exempt from autoplaying unstoppable audio ads just because I pay. I told them to double check, since otherwise I'd be canceling, and they confirmed that it's a thing, so I canceled. (I'm 50% sure the support person just didn't know what I was saying. Maybe my ad blocker was being screwy somehow.)
Outside of that, I find the coverage to be pretty neutral or maybe center-left, but definitely factual and not outrage baiting. WSJ is even more neutral, but I find that WaPo has better politics coverage (while WSJ has better business coverage). NYT is similar to WaPo, but IMO a little less neutral with the way its headlines are written. NYT is still a great paper though.
Yes, there have also been major factual blunders, but for the vast majority of information they seem to genuinely try and deliver vetted facts.
Ironically the real solution to this is more ads, but people will block that too lol
Edit: Explanation - the "I subscribe to the NYT" as a pat response to funding news sources puts far too much power in the NYT's hands, and they've proven to be less than trustworthy in the past.
In defense of the NYT, vetting sources is hard and they publish a whole lot of good content.
Has the NYT changed anything concretely since then? Because going by the way they still seem completely addicted to "anonymous sources in the intelligence community" it sure doesn't seem like they have learnt their lesson.
The vast majority of the reporting from NYT is good, and I don't rely on them exclusively. They're just the only written news source I pay for.
The truth is the NYT is a heavily biased, establishment bootlicking far-left progressivism propogating propaganda machine. They will do whatever it takes to present the opposing view as racist, supremacist, sexist, anti-semetic, anti-gay, and bigoted, while anything far worse but on "their side" is handled with kid gloves. Trump sneezed? Well that's racist, plus he wants you to drink bleach, literally, so we're going to cover that heavily for the next week. Something bad happened? It's Actually Trump's Fault. Here's Why. Trump was totally going to destroy America, except, well, that didn't actually happen, at all, but they're still trying to push that narrative.
Biden bungled Afghanistan, gas prices and inflation is through the roof, Putin invaded Ukraine under his watch, Biden very prematurely declared "independence from the virus" a year ago (!!!), Biden flip flops almost as much as Trump, has more deaths under his belt from COVID than Trump... everything is swept under the rug, a passing mention in all but the most egregious examples, and even then they treat him gently. I recently read an opinion column from a long-standing columnist there basically telling us how we should all support Biden because he just, like, has a really tough job, you know, and would you even wish such an important and consequential job on your worst enemy?
The NYT needs help for sure, but not financially, unfortunately.
In theory public media like PBS and NPR should address the gap, but those organizations tend to depend on donations from the wealthy, so their coverage skews towards their interests and conversational style.
I think the government should provide newspaper subscription vouchers to the poor.