If they intend for a mass market to read their articles, indie publications should find a way to sell a user an article for a fair price. Especially in the context of coming from a news aggregator site, it's absurd that I'm going to buy a recurring subscription for Tax Software Quarterly, Yacht Week, Greg's TV Reviews etc. The number of distinct domains I click through to from HN alone would be hundreds of dollars a month if I'm starting subscriptions for each one.
I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.
I think the video streaming services are a good model to follow. You go on Prime Video and see videos from several decades, dozens of cable & broadcast networks, and hundreds or thousands of distributors and production companies. The rights are a mess, but that's all hidden from view. Now if only text-based media could operate like that...
if someone is unwilling to pay for access to an entire collection of articles, i'd find it very unlikely that they pay for a single article. unless it's an outrageously low price like 10 cents or something
Well, it certainly should be well under a buck -- I refuse to believe they're earning more than 25 cents per visitor from the circus of bullshit sticky autoplaying video ads festooning the pages anyway. I'd just click "Pay 49 cents" if they had Apple Pay or another 1-click option that doesn't share my information with them, AND it meant zero ads. Of course even the paywalled sites that sell subscriptions mostly don't turn off their ads, so I assume they'd like to double-dip.
I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.