7 ms·

Do you think the 1,600 journalists at The New York Times, many of whom work in difficult environments (including the White House, lol), should work for free? Qu

Do you think the 1,600 journalists at The New York Times, many of whom work in difficult environments (including the White House, lol), should work for free? Quite the Scrooge move.

chiefalchemist 7y ago
Sidebar: working for and writing at tbe NYT - or any "news" publisher - doesn't make you a journalist. Journalist is a process and a result. We're too quick to use the word journalist. The low bar should not be so normalized.
- barretts 7y ago
  Lol. NYT = "low bar". You're living in an alternate reality.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Ya think? If you read the NYT in the 70's and 80's like I did - and then compare it to today's - then you'd realize how hard I'm laughing right now. You reflecting their approach (i.e.,unable to be objective) is nothing short of vindication (for me).
knolax 7y ago
They should pay me reparations for reading some of the nonsense they publish.
- barretts 7y ago
  I'm sorry for your indentured servitude.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't feed egregious comments by replying to them. That's in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - knolax 7y ago
    Thank you.
barretts 7y ago
I think a lot of what you need to know about (a swathe of) the Hacker News community is that I get voted down for pointing out that you're stealing content.
- eindiran 7y ago
  From the HN Guidelines: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ailideex 7y ago
  I don't subscribe to the idea that you can steal something which is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. To steal is "to take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else" - can't really take the bits from NYT - after someone reads their article without paying them NYT has no less bits than they had before.
sjdegraeve 7y ago
For those who want a daily concise version of the New York Times, check out https://timesdigest.com/ https://timesdigest.com/. It's not free, but I've found it to be a great way to read the NYTimes. Example of the 10-page daily PDF: https://timesdigest.com/samples/timesdigest https://timesdigest.com/samples/timesdigest
timar 7y ago
I feel like, if PewDiePie can make 1 Million a month in youtube ad-revenue and 8 million total. A Newssite like NYT ought to be able to support their staff, thanks to a global reach and 240Million views per month.
- sharkmerry 7y ago
  8 million dollars over 1600 journalists is $5000 each. Pewdipie doesnt have the costs of running a news company and hes not in the news industry
  - timar 7y ago
    Yeah, thats 8 million a month. i feel like 5k a month is pretty good pay for a journalist.
    - pvg 7y ago
      NYT should adopt the business model of a youtube edgelord and then pay its journalists submarket wages does not sound like a very realistic approach to running a solvent news organization.
      - ByzantineO6 7y ago
        "a solvent news organization."... I think I see the problem!
larnmar 7y ago
No, I feel that they should all go and get other jobs.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Do you think that if the New York Times sends you a copy of their article, you're obligated to pay for it, even if you didn't agree to pay for it? I'm happy to pay for content. I donate $10/mo to both Mother Jones and ProPublica. That's more for each than the cost of a New York Times subscription. Neither of these has a paywall. I'd prefer that they didn't have popovers either, but that's about as good as I can expect in the modern anti-privacy, anti-attention culture of the internet. I just don't feel obligated to pay for content that is sent to me without me ever agreeing to pay for it. I also think search engines shouldn't index paywalled content, and that newsfeeds like HN or Reddit shouldn't allow links to paywalled content, and I consistently downvote paywalled content. EDIT: I'm also going to start requesting that people not link to paywalled content when I see it, I think.
wolco 7y ago
Calling someone a scrooge or cheap for finding a hole in a technical limitation device that is sloppy in its implementation as it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content is very unhackernews like. NYT one of the largest most profitable companies pretends to show you an article baits you and demands money and you are a scrooge for not paying? In that context they are the rich entity and should give the content away (the way Scrooge should have). No where in the story does it mention Tiny Tim finding coal in Scroogle's garbage and someone stopping him and calling him cheap for not paying full price because Scrooge employes so many people.
- baddox 7y ago
  > it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content This is the most important point here. If your content is not actually public, you really shouldn't get the benefits of search engine exposure, HN exposure, or even the distribution from sharing what appears to be a URL to a hypertext document.
neeksHN 7y ago
Do you assume all HN users would reach the paywalls' read-limits through organic everyday use? I felt forced to disable cookies and javascript on the following sites just after exclusively clicking on links submitted to HN: NYT, Medium, Washington Post, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and Harvard Business Review. I'd prefer if submitters choose more user-respecting sources, but until then I refuse to feel guilty over stopping these intrusive sites and their dark patterns.
baddox 7y ago
I don't think they should work for free. I'm not under the impression that they do work for free, or that blocking ads or paywalls will cause them to work for free.
godshatter 7y ago
Whenever I see a New York Times link somewhere, I just move on now since I know I can't read it. I'm not going to pay a subscription for every web site I might want to read an article on. Their business model is not my concern; if they want my business they'll have to try something else.
antisthenes 7y ago
Reading many opinion pieces from NYT, I wouldn't cry if the vast majority of those journalists became unemployed. It's outrage journalism and thus not worthy of my time or attention. NYT does do good journalism, but, even for a company with their credentials and resources, its share seems to be ever dwindling as time goes on.
cmdshiftf4 7y ago
>Quite the Scrooge move. Seconded. There's something very tasteless about a bunch of very well paid tech employees who'll readily decry adtech, tracking and data brokerage (despite many of them working on it themselves), who'll proclaim "there has to be another way!", who'll also lambast modern journalism for "falling quality", circumventing content subscriptions and depriving publishers of revenue simply because of a built-up sense of entitlement to everything being free. If the content is worth reading, i.e. it's from a publisher you believe to be of sufficient quality to try and find methods to work around their subscriptions, then it's worth paying for.

Do you think the 1,600 journalists at The New York Times, many of whom work in difficult environments (including the White House, lol), should work for free? Quite the Scrooge move.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Sidebar: working for and writing at tbe NYT - or any "news" publisher - doesn't make you a journalist. Journalist is a process and a result. We're too quick to use the word journalist. The low bar should not be so normalized.

barretts 7y ago
Lol. NYT = "low bar". You're living in an alternate reality.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Ya think? If you read the NYT in the 70's and 80's like I did - and then compare it to today's - then you'd realize how hard I'm laughing right now. You reflecting their approach (i.e.,unable to be objective) is nothing short of vindication (for me).

knolax 7y ago

They should pay me reparations for reading some of the nonsense they publish.

barretts 7y ago
I'm sorry for your indentured servitude.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't feed egregious comments by replying to them. That's in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- knolax 7y ago
  Thank you.

barretts 7y ago

I think a lot of what you need to know about (a swathe of) the Hacker News community is that I get voted down for pointing out that you're stealing content.

eindiran 7y ago
From the HN Guidelines: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ailideex 7y ago
I don't subscribe to the idea that you can steal something which is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. To steal is "to take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else" - can't really take the bits from NYT - after someone reads their article without paying them NYT has no less bits than they had before.

sjdegraeve 7y ago

For those who want a daily concise version of the New York Times, check out https://timesdigest.com/ https://timesdigest.com/. It's not free, but I've found it to be a great way to read the NYTimes. Example of the 10-page daily PDF: https://timesdigest.com/samples/timesdigest https://timesdigest.com/samples/timesdigest

timar 7y ago

I feel like, if PewDiePie can make 1 Million a month in youtube ad-revenue and 8 million total. A Newssite like NYT ought to be able to support their staff, thanks to a global reach and 240Million views per month.

sharkmerry 7y ago
8 million dollars over 1600 journalists is $5000 each. Pewdipie doesnt have the costs of running a news company and hes not in the news industry
- timar 7y ago
  Yeah, thats 8 million a month. i feel like 5k a month is pretty good pay for a journalist.
  - pvg 7y ago
    NYT should adopt the business model of a youtube edgelord and then pay its journalists submarket wages does not sound like a very realistic approach to running a solvent news organization.
    - ByzantineO6 7y ago
      "a solvent news organization."... I think I see the problem!

larnmar 7y ago

No, I feel that they should all go and get other jobs.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Do you think that if the New York Times sends you a copy of their article, you're obligated to pay for it, even if you didn't agree to pay for it? I'm happy to pay for content. I donate $10/mo to both Mother Jones and ProPublica. That's more for each than the cost of a New York Times subscription. Neither of these has a paywall. I'd prefer that they didn't have popovers either, but that's about as good as I can expect in the modern anti-privacy, anti-attention culture of the internet. I just don't feel obligated to pay for content that is sent to me without me ever agreeing to pay for it. I also think search engines shouldn't index paywalled content, and that newsfeeds like HN or Reddit shouldn't allow links to paywalled content, and I consistently downvote paywalled content. EDIT: I'm also going to start requesting that people not link to paywalled content when I see it, I think.

wolco 7y ago

Calling someone a scrooge or cheap for finding a hole in a technical limitation device that is sloppy in its implementation as it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content is very unhackernews like. NYT one of the largest most profitable companies pretends to show you an article baits you and demands money and you are a scrooge for not paying? In that context they are the rich entity and should give the content away (the way Scrooge should have). No where in the story does it mention Tiny Tim finding coal in Scroogle's garbage and someone stopping him and calling him cheap for not paying full price because Scrooge employes so many people.

baddox 7y ago
> it is click-bait in it's dark patterns of pretending the page is an open page/free page so it can compete in the search engines but in reality it presents a paid-gate that only appears after leading content This is the most important point here. If your content is not actually public, you really shouldn't get the benefits of search engine exposure, HN exposure, or even the distribution from sharing what appears to be a URL to a hypertext document.

neeksHN 7y ago

Do you assume all HN users would reach the paywalls' read-limits through organic everyday use? I felt forced to disable cookies and javascript on the following sites just after exclusively clicking on links submitted to HN: NYT, Medium, Washington Post, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and Harvard Business Review. I'd prefer if submitters choose more user-respecting sources, but until then I refuse to feel guilty over stopping these intrusive sites and their dark patterns.

baddox 7y ago

I don't think they should work for free. I'm not under the impression that they do work for free, or that blocking ads or paywalls will cause them to work for free.

godshatter 7y ago

Whenever I see a New York Times link somewhere, I just move on now since I know I can't read it. I'm not going to pay a subscription for every web site I might want to read an article on. Their business model is not my concern; if they want my business they'll have to try something else.

antisthenes 7y ago

Reading many opinion pieces from NYT, I wouldn't cry if the vast majority of those journalists became unemployed. It's outrage journalism and thus not worthy of my time or attention. NYT does do good journalism, but, even for a company with their credentials and resources, its share seems to be ever dwindling as time goes on.

cmdshiftf4 7y ago

>Quite the Scrooge move. Seconded. There's something very tasteless about a bunch of very well paid tech employees who'll readily decry adtech, tracking and data brokerage (despite many of them working on it themselves), who'll proclaim "there has to be another way!", who'll also lambast modern journalism for "falling quality", circumventing content subscriptions and depriving publishers of revenue simply because of a built-up sense of entitlement to everything being free. If the content is worth reading, i.e. it's from a publisher you believe to be of sufficient quality to try and find methods to work around their subscriptions, then it's worth paying for.