> Use to be very common for people to pay for news (newspapers), but since online, people seem to expect free.
I've heard this one many times. I pay for news as part of my streaming TV subscription. Should I also pay the NY Times $325 a year for whatever it is that they're selling? Even setting aside concerns about the quality of the product, news subscriptions are priced way too high given the amount of competition for those dollars. Then they'll monitor everything you do and sell your information to the highest bidder. Then when you realize it's not worth it, they'll put you through hell and back to cancel.
Funny to see people publicly out themselves as too cheap to become informed.
The currency that is limited is not money, it is time. When news is presented digitally, it's just one more thing on your always-connected screen competing for your attention with every other website, app, video, etc. With a physical newspaper, you actually (most days) carve out the time to peruse it front page to back. Of course some days its a quick glance while other days you read every article. But the physical-ness of a newspaper somehow elevates it's priority and commands your time, in a way a digital version simply cannot.
>Funny to see people publicly out themselves as too cheap to become informed.
Not that, the only news I can find on-line is about National Items. I cannot find any information about what my City Council is doing, what is being built in the City. I can find only scrubbed items released by just the Council.
In the old days, the local news paper would investigate the local politicians and report if they are doing anything illegal. Now, we have no idea, so graft could be rampant in local politics and no one would know.
Oh, I'm old enough to remember the days when we were all subscribing to the local newspaper. I'm still thinking about subscribing to our local paper, but last time I checked it was just too expensive, taking into account that all the news I need will get to me by social media, TV, email, or text message.
My local paper is about 9% local crime stories, 1% local politics stories, and 90% AP story reprints. For that, they want $10/mo for the online product or $20/mo for a 4x a week delivery of a dead trees product.
AP will give me 90% of that for free and unedited. The other 10% I can find through other channels or is of no interest to me.
> I've heard this one many times. I pay for news as part of my streaming TV subscription. Should I also pay the NY Times $325 a year for whatever it is that they're selling?
uHH...yes?? Hello? We used to pay $1 every day to buy newsPAPERs? Remember? Does this stuff being on the internet suddenly makes journalism a free labor or something?
I only every bought like 2 newspapers regularly, canard enchainé (1.20 euros/per week) and monde diplomatique (5.40/per month). That comes around to 52 * 1.8 + 12 * 5.4 = 158.4 euros per year. So for half the price I get two newspapers with potentially different view on events. 325 euros per year sounds overpriced to me given that I like to hear multiple opinions from different publications. 325 to get access to 3-4 publications that only publishes weekly sounds good.
You can also look at other french journals like mediapart who do investigative journalism. Even they only charge 120 a year (https://abo.mediapart.fr).
Did we? I grew up middle-class and no one I knew got actual newspapers. That was always a marker for me of someone being rich. We maybe got weekly/monthly news magazines, but that's an order of magnitude cheaper.
What years ? Even in the 80s and a good deal of the 90s, many people got and shared newspapers. They were everywhere. I remember them being 15, 25, 50 Cents through the years.
Definitely did. Maybe not in your area, but many people here used to spend their idle times reading newspapers. Restaurants have them ready on the tables for people to consume as they come. Now its been replaced by phones.
Newspapers was the only the way I could get any insights on the outer world. This was in 2000s and early 2010s. There were TVs but newspapers were the only method where I could stare at pictures from all over the world and read random people's opinion.
I've heard this one many times. I pay for news as part of my streaming TV subscription. Should I also pay the NY Times $325 a year for whatever it is that they're selling? Even setting aside concerns about the quality of the product, news subscriptions are priced way too high given the amount of competition for those dollars. Then they'll monitor everything you do and sell your information to the highest bidder. Then when you realize it's not worth it, they'll put you through hell and back to cancel.