Paying for newspapers online

[Aberlour10]

I think, we have all our favourite online editions of the newspapers,...It would be interesting to know how the forum members think about this question...there are some tendencies in this direction in the media industry.

 

Robert

[hrothgar]

I give far more than that to NPR each year, on the other hand I approve of the NPR business model.

 

NPR raises enough money to broadcast, but allows anyone to freeride / listen.

I think that's a much more efficient way to run things that pay walls...

[Winstonm]

I would pay a newspaper that still concerned itself with investigative reporting, but since that is exactly none of them my answer to your question is no. I am not interested in a stenographer telling me what he said, she said.

[y66]

Since I switched to a notebook computer, I don't spent nearly as much time reading the hard copy version of my favorite newspaper which puts all of its content online for free. Maybe its time to cancel my subscription. If they start charging for online content, I'll be happy to pay the going rate.

[kenberg]

Here is what I do currently:

I subscribe to the print version of the Washington Post.

I sometimes read the New York Times or the Baltimore Sun online.

I occasionally read some other paper online (someone recommends it or whatever).

 

I pretty much prefer to keep it this way. As far as I know, I could continue to read the free online Post even if I dropped my subscription to the print edition. But I have had coffee in the morning and a newspaper in my hands for some sixty years now. It would seem odd to change. Also, my wife does the sudoku (yes I know I could print it out), we do the Sunday crossword, we toss the tv guide into the appropriate room and so on. Also, Becky and I can easily both browse while sitting in the same room chatting. If ever the print edition disappears, then I'll cope with online only but for now I like the print.

[Lobowolf]

I would pay a newspaper that still concerned itself with investigative reporting, but since that is exactly none of them my answer to your question is no. I am not interested in a stenographer telling me what he said, she said.

What if you had to pay $10 a month to read Bacevich?

[jjbrr]

Newspapers are going the way of the dodo. The important news is readily available in a million places on the web. Local articles are almost always online. Sports columns and analyses can be found everywhere online. Political hullabaloo is everywhere.

 

What am I missing? I suppose something like WSJ would be worthwhile to me, but for the Times or Washington Post or something, I just don't put enough value in it.

[hrothgar]

Newspapers are going the way of the dodo. The important news is readily available in a million places on the web. Local articles are almost always online. Sports columns and analyses can be found everywhere online. Political hullabaloo is everywhere.

 

What am I missing? I suppose something like WSJ would be worthwhile to me, but for the Times or Washington Post or something, I just don't put enough value in it.

You're missing the difference between opinion and facts...

 

I don't see much value in the Op Ed pages and the like; however, there's always going to be a need for feet on the ground gather information...

[jjbrr]

Well, in fairness, I don't put much value on "facts" and even less on "opinions" so maybe you're right. Do you have a convincing argument about why I should be so interested in "facts" that are in newspapers but not online? This obviously shouldn't be a philosophical debate, but "facts" don't really make much difference in one's life.

[hrothgar]

Well, in fairness, I don't put much value on "facts" and even less on "opinions" so maybe you're right.

then you're probably better of spending your money on porn because, from the sounds of it, you're just sitting around playing with yourself...

[jjbrr]

Enlighten me. Do you always scoff at people whose interests are different from yours?

[jjbrr]

Read any good almanacs lately?

[Lobowolf]

Enlighten me. Do you always scoff at people whose interests are different from yours?

Are you new around here?

[hrothgar]

Enlighten me. Do you always scoff at people whose interests are different from yours?

Nope, but I have very little respect for individuals who advance inane, self contradictory arguments.

 

1. You started off by saying that you didn't see any value in newspapers because all the important news is available all over the web.

 

2. I responded that that there is a difference between opinion and factual information.

 

There are any number of web sites that do a great job analyzing data. 538.com is fantastic. I like reading Andrew Sullivan's blog, Glenn Greenwald's blog, Andrew Bacevish always has interesting things to say.

 

However, all of these information sources analyze information that other people have collected. All of this analysis is ultimately dependent on someone going off to Bloomington/Baghdad/Berlin/Bangkok and collected raw data that other people are going to analyze.

 

At the end of the data, that requirement is typically addressed by traditional news outlets. There are a small number of blogs that are starting to hire reporters (Talking Points Memo is one such example, but these are few and far between)

 

You respond that you don't care about facts or opinions...

 

If you had started off saying "I don't care about facts or opinions, so I don't care about newspapers", I really wouldn't have cared.

 

However, your basic line of argument is nonsensical...

[hrothgar]

I would pay a newspaper that still concerned itself with investigative reporting, but since that is exactly none of them my answer to your question is no.  I am not interested in a stenographer telling me what he said, she said.

What if you had to pay $10 a month to read Bacevich?

Probably wouldn't pay.

 

If, however, Bacevich were to offer something like the following, I might very well chip in:

 

I calculated how much money my time is worth.  In order for me to continue blogging for the next year, I need $85K in compensation.  If the user community is able to raise that much money, I'll blog for another year and I'll make my content freely available to anyone who wants to read it.  If folks can't raise the requisite funds, I'm not going to bother to publish anything.

[jjbrr]

I'm sorry, but maybe you're just not very good at using the internet. There are plenty of places where the information provided is either first hand just like newspapers or the articles are copies of the newspaper columns verbatim. I don't really feel like doing much research, but I suspect I could find almost all of recent NY Times and Washington Post articles somewhere on the internet. Many local papers print the same articles in their papers, and they put those on the internet.

 

If you somehow think the information in your precious newspapers is better than that online, despite being EXACTLY THE SAME, I think you're nuts.

 

Furthermore, any responsible reader will realize that news industries are a business. They have a lot of incentive to get the information to the reader ASAP, and it doesn't take an hrothgar to realize that sometimes you sacrifice quality when you need to do something quickly. As such, a prudent reader will realize information that you seem to consider fact in newspapers may not be the truth or the complete truth or whatever. That's why I put "facts" in quotations, because I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "facts" when it should be easy to see that information in newspaper columns is often far from fact. Like I said, if you're looking for facts anywhere but the almanac, you're about as nuts as those who call Obama the Antichrist. So enlighten me. What "facts" are in newspapers? Surely there are interpretations of facts or partial facts, but I would go so far as to say the whole truth has never been told in a newspaper article.

 

With that said, are newspapers a valuable source of information? Absolutely. Is the internet a better source of information? Yes, if you know where to look and don't indiscriminately take everything at face value.

 

And speaking of inane arguments:

 

"1. You started off by saying that you didn't see any value in newspapers because all the important news is available all over the web.

 

2. I responded that that there is a difference between opinion and factual information."

 

is just retarded. You honestly think newspaper columns are facts and never contain any elements of opinion? You honestly think all news on the web is opinion and not fact? That's completely nuts.

[hrothgar]

I'm sorry, but maybe you're just not very good at using the internet. There are plenty of places where the information provided is either first hand just like newspapers or the articles are copies of the newspaper columns verbatim. I don't really feel like doing much research, but I suspect I could find almost all of recent NY Times and Washington Post articles somewhere on the internet. Many local papers print the same articles in their papers, and they put those on the internet.

 

If you somehow think the information in your precious newspapers is better than that online, despite being EXACTLY THE SAME, I think you're nuts.

If the newspaper / press service folds, where does the online edition copy the information from?

[hrothgar]

And speaking of inane arguments:

 

"1. You started off by saying that you didn't see any value in newspapers because all the important news is available all over the web.

 

2. I responded that that there is a difference between opinion and factual information."

 

is just retarded. You honestly think newspaper columns are facts and never contain any elements of opinion? You honestly think all news on the web is opinion and not fact? That's completely nuts.

Learn to read, *****-for-brains...

 

Show me where I claimed that newspapers never contain any element of opinion. Indeed, in my original response, I was very careful to differentiate between the Op Ed pages and reporters who are collecting information.

 

When you debate people, its generally frowned upon to misrepresent the other person's argument. It might be easier, but damn, it sure makes you look stupid.

[jjbrr]

And anyway, I stand by my claim that the newspaper industry is suffering. At the risk of getting flamed for sharing an expert's opinion on the matter, I turned to PBS:

 

What challenges are newspapers facing?

 

The newspaper business is beset by problems on all sides. According to The Vanishing Newspaper, by journalism professor Philip Meyer, the industry peaked early in 1920s, when the average household read 1.3 newspapers a day. By 2001, almost one out of every two households no longer read a newspaper.

 

To look at it another way, four in 10 Americans indicate they read a newspaper yesterday, compared to a decade ago, when one out of every two Americans said they did on a typical day, according to the Pew Reseach Center. More readers are turning to other outlets incuding cable television, online news sites, blogs, and news aggregators like Google and Yahoo! News.

 

The underlying value driver for newspapers continues to be circulation, according to industry analysts. Circulation still accounts directly for only 15 percent to 20 percent of an average newspaper's top line, but explains 85 to 90 percent of the variance of advertising rates.

 

As Meyers notes, when newspapers had a near-monopoly over retailers' access to customers, publishers enjoyed high profits. Today, as the industry grapples with competing platforms, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain profit levels of 15 to 20 percent without implementing cost-cutting measures.

 

Publicly owned newspapers are beholden to the demands of Wall Street, where investors measure their value based on how much money they make and how much money they will make in the future.

 

In recent years, institutional and outside investors have pressured publicly held newspaper chains to sell off individual papers. Many newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch have cut their staffs. Some 2,800 full-time newspaper jobs have been lost so far this decade, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Other newspapers have shut down pressrooms and closed overseas bureaus.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ne...aperprimer.html

 

It seems I'm not the only one content with getting information at no cost, even if it has some minor flaws, which I don't really care about.

[jjbrr]

And speaking of inane arguments:

 

"1. You started off by saying that you didn't see any value in newspapers because all the important news is available all over the web.

 

2. I responded that that there is a difference between opinion and factual information."

 

is just retarded. You honestly think newspaper columns are facts and never contain any elements of opinion? You honestly think all news on the web is opinion and not fact? That's completely nuts.

Learn to read, *****-for-brains...

 

Show me where I claimed that newspapers never contain any element of opinion. Indeed, in my original response, I was very careful to differentiate between the Op Ed pages and reporters who are collecting information.

 

When you debate people, its generally frowned upon to misrepresent the other person's argument. It might be easier, but damn, it sure makes you look stupid.

2 does not logically follow 1 unless what I said is true.

 

Unless you're somehow bringing Op Eds into the discussion with "facts" which is completely irrelevant to the quality of information posing as fact in a newspaper compared to that as a fact online.

[jjbrr]

I'm sorry, but maybe you're just not very good at using the internet. There are plenty of places where the information provided is either first hand just like newspapers or the articles are copies of the newspaper columns verbatim. I don't really feel like doing much research, but I suspect I could find almost all of recent NY Times and Washington Post articles somewhere on the internet. Many local papers print the same articles in their papers, and they put those on the internet.

 

If you somehow think the information in your precious newspapers is better than that online, despite being EXACTLY THE SAME, I think you're nuts.

If the newspaper / press service folds, where does the online edition copy the information from?

The internet reports EXACTLY WHAT THE NEWSPAPERS REPORTS IN MOST CASES. Your guess is as good as mine if the newspaper folds. But chances are I won't give the internet information as much credibility even as I do now!

[hrothgar]

I'm sorry, but maybe you're just not very good at using the internet. There are plenty of places where the information provided is either first hand just like newspapers or the articles are copies of the newspaper columns verbatim. I don't really feel like doing much research, but I suspect I could find almost all of recent NY Times and Washington Post articles somewhere on the internet. Many local papers print the same articles in their papers, and they put those on the internet.

 

If you somehow think the information in your precious newspapers is better than that online, despite being EXACTLY THE SAME, I think you're nuts.

If the newspaper / press service folds, where does the online edition copy the information from?

The internet reports EXACTLY WHAT THE NEWSPAPERS REPORTS IN MOST CASES. Your guess is as good as mine if the newspaper folds. But chances are I won't give the internet information as much credibility even as I do now!

I just went to Google's news page

 

Here are the top stories (Notice a pattern?)

 

Top Stories:

 

Butler Goes to the Final Four - The New York Times

Palin fires up 'tea party' activists at rally in Nevada - The Washington Post

Obama to make recess appointments to 15 administration posts - CNN

 

World:

 

Landmarks, cities worldwide unplug for Earth Hour - The Associated Press

Netanyahu endangering Israel's security - Ha'aretz

Families seek answers after sinking of South Korean warship - New York Times online

 

US:

 

McCain understudy Sarah Palin is now the star - The Washington Post

Ky. Mennonites labor through grief to bury family - The Associated Press

A Health Legislation Fail-Safe Works, but Not as Expected - The New York Times

[jjbrr]

Am i supposed to notice the pattern that when I said "The internet reports EXACTLY WHAT THE NEWSPAPERS REPORTS IN MOST CASES." that that was fact rather than opinion?

 

What's your point? The original question was "Would I pay $X for newspapers" and my answer was "No, I can get it for free."

 

Is the information in all those links 100% fact? I have no idea.

Is it close enough to 100% fact that I can get the basic idea of what happened? Yes.

If I wanted to further research the topic to get the whole truth, could I? Yes.

Would it be irresponsible to take everything in those articles as fact and not question either the credibility of the source or that the information is accurate? Completely.

[Winstonm]

I would pay a newspaper that still concerned itself with investigative reporting, but since that is exactly none of them my answer to your question is no.  I am not interested in a stenographer telling me what he said, she said.

What if you had to pay $10 a month to read Bacevich?

I bought his book but I don't remember the price - in excess of $10 I am pretty sure. So I have already paid more than that to read Bacevich.

 

However, the original question asked if I would pay for my "favorite" newspaper, not "a" newspaper. I would be willing to pay for "a" newspaper I found worthwhile, but I have no favorite that fits that description.

[Winstonm]

Here are the top stories (Notice a pattern?)

 

The "other" pattern here is that The Washington Post keeps trying to sell Sarah Palin, the tea baggers, and the tiny fraction of Republican and libertarian wingnuts who show up to see her as "headline news".