Hacker News Reader

Comment by strathmeyer | Hacker News Reader

The website says that I have already read my 10 free articles this month and need to pay money to read this one. This has been happening a lot with HackerNews links for me. Do I have a virus, or are you supposed to be rich to post here?

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The New York Times is professional journalism. You don't need to be rich to afford $3.75/week. This is about $200/yr, on the order of the price of a print subscription. Working class families have been reading newspapers for decades.

Occasionally we find that professional, full-time newsrooms produce better content than the blogosphere. Producing that content took a staff of educated, full-time professionals with families and mortgages. I don't find it particularly offensive that people who regularly consume their output are expected to help fund their salaries so they can keep producing.

Of course, because digital edition has distribution costs just like printed editions.

Does the printed edition have videos? Real time updates? RSS?

If you get the same news, and you were happy with what you were paying to get high quality news (you're not buying a sheet of paper, you're buying the news), then what's the problem?

Why should moving to digital mean reducing the price versus print?

Perhaps the NY Times should keep the margin difference as profit, helping to restore their financial condition from the recent disaster it has been, so they don't have to go crawling to Carlos Slim again. Building up their financial position would assist in their independence as a news source.

Perhaps the NY Times should put that margin back into the business, and create more / better content, thus more than justifying the price staying the same.

Either way, the argument in favor of reducing prices just because of cheaper distribution, is not inherently a good one.

Agreed, and this group as much as any should understand that just because the product is made of bits and can be distributed virtually free, it should not be free of cost.

Just like any good software company, the NYTimes should be thinking about their price strategy in a more complex way than cost plus. And I'm sure they are.

It's not about distribution. Much like ordering a book from Amazon, buying software, or going to see a movie, distribution is typically not the most relevant cost.

I think the NYTimes is one of the best bargains out there, and lucky for those who don't pay the benefits spillover to other journalism, especially the blog/twitter world.

You're not paying for distribution (ok, you are, but not very much). You're paying for the content to be created.

But I don't like nytimes and almost never read their articles, just looking if it's of any interest to me, because it was posted here.

Empirically you do - you've already read 10 this month.

Clicked on. Empirically it says a lot more about their titles, rather than content.

Sometimes it works in private window. But I agree, this is ridiculous, I cannot access most of the links to nytimes either, especially blog ones, even in private window.

Just add this script as a bookmarklet (drag it to your bookmark bar) and click it whenever you get a paywall message:

javascript:%20window.location%20=%20window.location.protocol%20+%20'//'%20+%20window.location.hostname%20+%20window.location.pathname%20+%20'?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes';

PS: Support journalism if you have the money to do so!

Thanks.

PS: Maybe I don't like their journalism and prefer straight to the point content.

Find the appropriate extension/add-on for your browser (assuming you're using a desktop version) and kill all your cookies from nytimes.com.

Repeat whenever you get the 10-article notice.

Edit: it should go without saying, but... if you find yourself doing this often, consider purchasing a subscription so this service can remain online.

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