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Comment by koliber | Hacker News Reader

Newspapers used to be printed on paper and no one batted an eye when they were asked to fork over a few quarters per issue. It was not considered ritzy or posh to read about what is going on. Someone needs to pay those people who create the papers.

Now that newspapers are online, somehow it's ritzy to be able to read and the fact that people have jobs which involve creating newspaper content is a bitter lesson.

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The price was mostly symbolic (if they were free people would probably abuse it, e.g. for paper to line your birdcage with), and it was ads in the paper that paid for the business.

Heck, now we have multi-billion dollar companies selling us ads (Google, Meta) but no one wants to pay the people whose jobs include investigating government corruption (as well as reporting on Taylor Swift getting a ring...). Somewhat understandably, since ads on the Internet are much more obnoxious than ads on newspaper/magazines.

I just miss when a newspaper stand didn't ask to track your every interest, hobby and political view. And track which articles you read for all time in a profile to be monetized.

The cost of the above is orders of magnitude greater than some loose change adjusted for inflation.

People got spoiled with free content. Some never in their life payed for a newspaper. The problem is subscribing to one or two sources is not enough. You will miss a lot. To understand what happens in Chine you better read Chinese, and not BBC's interpretation. Now that there are so many free translating tools it's easy. The same about every conflict. There are two sides at least. Your favorite source will show most likely only one. Test it on Ukraine or Gaza.

> a few quarters per issue

Not X dollars per month with a yearly commitment that auto renews and for which you need to stay on hold for 6-12 hours to cancel...

Cry me a river.

If "newspapers" really wanted my money they'd band up and set up a micropayments agency so I could pay them for the issue i'm interested in again.

But they're only chasing whales instead so I have zero compassion.

The NYT is $23/month and I live in Australia. I'd be happy to pay them a dollar or two and buy an issue containing a known and limited set of articles from a particular date, but a subscription is irrelevant to me and I would bankrupt myself if I paid to subscribe to every newspaper that paywalls me.

You used to be able to buy the daily NYT printed edition in Canberra and Sydney at the very least. I’d actually be pretty surprised if you can’t still do it.

Don't know about this story in particular but a lot of online articles never make the print edition.

I agree that it has become hard to buy single issues in the digital world. I have some digital subscriptions, and would be happy to pay a bit here and there for one-off issues.

Newspapers also used to be heavily syndicated or covered the same large subjects, while keeping 2-3 to a geographical area.

Now that newspapers are online, an end user may be presented with hundreds or thousands of them, asking for a subscription.

It would not be even if I read newspapers. Real news qualify by not being fit to print since long before ww1 - I just like rearranging words.

I’m not opposed to paying, but I see two issues:

1. I could read a newspaper without a subscription. I could buy just one issue. NYT does that that online

2. A newspaper in a vending machine showed you more than just the headline. Like the subhead, for example. I can’t even see that. The default NYT experience without a subscription gives you only the title. And I have to agree to $25/month to get anything else assuming I’m not using a paywall bypass

“We have stuff, we say you’ll like it, cough up a bunch of money to find out what” is a tough sell for me.

Paywalls that give you at least the first few sentences make far more sense to me.

Right now when I went to their front page I could see a one paragraph summary of several news items. Granted, other front page stories only show the headline but I think that is an adequate substitute for what we got from peeking at the vending machine window.

I’d agree. Oddly, if you’re direct linked to the article you don’t get it though.

So I guess I could go find the story on their homepage and see it there. That’s a rather odd workflow.

"I don't want to pay for content, and don't you dare push advertising on me. I want your content. I don't care how you have to pay to make it, that's not my problem."

If people bounce without reading or paying, how much do they really want the content?

Articles like this might get me with a headline but once I hit a paywall I realize very quickly how little I care.

Right. I’m hitting the paywall before I even know what it’s about. I’m not hooked, so I have no interest in paying.

Which leaves trying to skirt the paywall. If it works I don’t need to pay, if it doesn’t that’s more confirmation it’s not worth it for me.

Lose/lose for them.

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