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Comment by michaelfeathers | Hacker News Reader

The fallacy there is that there is nothing to prevent ads from creeping in even though you do pay. That's been the history of cinema, cable, and internet radio.

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Absolutely right, but at the same time if you do pay, you have some (perhaps small) leverage over the content provider to try and ensure the advertising remains of a tolerable quality.

In practice, it seems that advertiser dollars always trump subscriber fees.

I am hopeful that as the providers become more directly connected to the consumers and it becomes increasingly feasible to deal with them directly, instead of at an arms length in aggregate as was the only option up until now, that we can cut out what is ultimately functioning as a middleman in the relationship, the advertiser. You know how the internet feels about middlemen than aren't adding much value.

Even if I just had the option of outbidding the advertiser I'd be happy.

This has been my dream for years. Netflix is satisfying part of my content needs with its streaming option. I can only hope that more company's will follow suite.

What I'd really like to see is a "real" news website that supplies non-biased news written by real investigative journalists with no advertisements. I'd pay handsomely for that.

> What I'd really like to see is a "real" news website that supplies non-biased news written by real investigative journalists with no advertisements. I'd pay handsomely for that.

+1, I'd definitely pay for that. Right now I don't trust news media by definition, and I believe only what I get from articles featured on HN - because I can be sure that when I click on "comments", I'll find it thoroughly analyzed and debunked by people who actually know and care about what they read. </rant>

Re: "real news" - http://www.propublica.org/ comes close...

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