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Comment by ako | Hacker News Reader

At the same time, having to subscribe to specific periodical keeps me from doing it all. I see the these subscribe pop-ups every time I visit a newspaper, at least 5 different newspapers per day. It is just not affordable to have 5 subscriptions, so I end up subscribing to none.

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Having the option to do either seems like the better approach for a consumer.

Worded differently, removing one of two options is worse for the consumer.

But that's not the current reality, as basically no newspapers are on Kindle Unlimited.

Or even worse is Apple News where it's pieces of major newspapers like the WSJ and then dumbed down newspapers like USA Today and nothing of the caliber of Financial Times.

What I want is an app/site that has all the news, strong blocklists so I can get rid of junk (USA Today), stuff I'm just not interested in (Wrestling Today if such a thing exists), and get more stuff that I didn't know existed (Upper Siberian Mining Monthly :-))!

https://www.pressreader.com might be worth a look. I only have limited access through my German library card, but what I've seen so far I liked.

Whoa.

Where has this been all my life?

Reasonable price, great selection of periodicals and newspapers.

Definite value.

None of the libraries I’m currently a member of has it, but the next city over does, so I’ll see if I can join that library - thanks for pointing this out!

I like the reading experience of it using its app. It combines the physical and "digital" views well.

I pay something like €5 to The Guardian and $2 to NYT (which I read very occasionally) every months. And then another €15 to a Swedish newspaper. That is very cheap to support independent journalism.

Wow, $2 is a good deal. I feel I paid that little to start, but now NYT charges me $20 CAD a month. I regularly debate whether it’s worth it or not, and it definitely stops me from subscribing to other publications.

Good luck canceling that subscription.

They have made it easier. It used to be that you had to call, but now you can do it on the web.

They have made it easier [by law] for subscribers [in California].

I had nine months of chargebacks before I finally got NYT to stop charging me.

Paypal has a one-click cancel option for any recurring payment.

This really isn't a big deal if you use credit card policy to your advantage.

When I canceled a subscription to a local paper (Dallas Morning News), their policy said I had to call to cancel. Instead, I sent an email informing them I was rescinding authorization to charge my credit card.

They initially responded stating that I had to call to cancel my subscription. One more email reminding them that charging my card without authorization would be credit card fraud turned out to be enough to have the phone call requirement dropped.

They always increase the price after a year, and I go through the cancelling forms in their website until they offer me the lower price again. I guess that they know how little I actually use the subscription, so it’s no point in trying to get more money from me.

I hope your calling The Guardian and especially the CIA... I mean the NYT "independent journalism" is an elaborate joke.

Why do you think so?

Not the original commentor.

As a longer time and now former NYT reader, it has definitely fallen off. It's abandoned balance and objectivity for trite left-leaning talking points. The breakup came when I realized I could not longer trust it to inform me to the depth and breadth I needed.

At this point, it's an average news publication - notice I didn't say journalism - riding on the fumes of its history. It's not bad. But every since the internet its become more and more generic.

Because publications like the NYT depend on access for their "journalism" [0]. Independent/investigative journalism requires an adversarial relationship to power, and looks more like [1]. In past decades, the establishment was occasionally forced to grapple with this [2] [3] but at this point the public discussion is so captured, it's no longer necessary.

Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent lays it out in depth.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/corres... [1] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/releases/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/27/archives/cia-established-...

The Guardian is one of the best examples of independent journalism. It's owned by the Scott Trust. It was set up by the original owner in the 30s to ensure editorial independence. People do sometimes confuse "editorial independence" with "taking an editorial line I personally disagree with", however.

You could try readly.com. It's around 12 USD/month for a huge amount of magazines and news papers.

These aggregators usually do not include 100% of the papers's content.

The magazines you can read on Readly are the full prints at least. Like a pdf-version of the hard copy magazine. I tried it for a couple of months and I did not see any difference or pages missing.

Just pick one to support. You can still visit all 5.

Preferably a local paper.

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