Do you subscribe to any online news sites?

One of the complaints that keep popping up over the vote is the lack of good independent info. but how many folks still regularly buy newspapers or subscribe to online news sites? Once news outlets have to reply on grabbing the attention of visitors as they pass by in order to keep their advertising revenue up it is no longer surprising that they are attracted to the more flamboyant characters. It’s always been a bit like that but now with competition being only a click away it is worse than ever

So, anyone find that they are now more willing to pay for what they once read for ‘free’?

Why would I subscribe to a news site? If it’s vaguely important or interesting someone will post it up here anyway!

Glad to see you have a P then. This place is indeed a good filter

I subscribe to the Guardian as I think it’s important to support quality journalism. Although every time I read anything by Polly Toynbee I get an urge to cancel my subscription…..

No. All my news I get free

Apple News App (many many sources)
BBC
Telegragph ( the 10 article limit is trivial to get round)
Guardian
Channel 4
Sky
Vice News

IMO the news subscription prices are far too high, £5-10 pa IMO would be appropriate. As you’ll see my view on bike and sailing magazines subscriptions is different

Just the BBC (that is obliged to be impartial, but in reality slightly one sided)
oh and The Register (that clearly allows its writers free reign)

I have no intention of paying to get thru a media paywall.
And refuse to pay to access media that has either Murdoch’s or Desmond’s name associated with it.

Nope – all free here:

I use google news, & BBC for the gossip.

BBC for breaking news.

Reuters, Bloomberg, Telegraph & Grauniad (need balance) for the important stuff.

Occasionally I read the Daily Mail at my FiL’s house. I generally need to rinse my brain out after that though.

All the sites / apps / feeds people are listing I go on too and they can be useful for understanding dominant Anglo American myopic narrative but just make sure that you stimulate your capacity for critical thought via more in depth analysis also ..

I used to be really into theregister, but I feel they’re taking the “politically incorrect” tone too far these days.

I only subscribe to one news source called Nextdraft, but a lot of that is tech/science/politics skewed.

I read the Guardian website.

If I go to Waitrose, then I will buy the Guardian. You get the money for it off your shopping.

I used to subscribe to Private Eye, but stopped when the overwhelming amount of corruption detailed in it began to lead to a sense of nihilism and general dejectedness. I’m more ignorant, but less anxious because of it. I may buy this fortnight’s copy for a news source on Brexit though.

Growing up, we had at least 3 newspapers in our house. The state owned paper, and two privately owned papers (one of which was in a different language). We also got a fortnightly tabloid type paper.

I will subscribe to printed newspapers at some point. It will probably be the Guardian, the Sun and maybe The Observer and The Times at the weekend.

Welldone footflaps although I would agree about the Polly Toynbee bit
I’m fairly sure there are a few Economist subscribers on here as well

but does no-one worry that the quality of journalism will go downhill as these sites struggle to get people to come to them vs the ‘juicier’ sites and so it’s a bit of a race to the bottom. In the end journalists need to be paid and if a site can’t get views then people can’t be paid. Look at all the issues on here with adverts and I’m sure I saw a complaint on another thread and I already despise the Edge/MSN newsfeed for mixing up news and advertorials

Is there a price at which folks would consider it ‘ok’ to pay for a news site or are folks happy with free in the assumption that newspapers will always find a way to keep going in some way

runs off to take a look at Nextdraft, thanks for the tip curiousyellow

I’m fairly sure there are a few Economist subscribers on here as well

I did, but eventually they pissed me off with their far right economic opinions….

Keep meaning to try the FT……

Not really. I get a lot of my news from aggregators (Flipboard), but that’s got a bias towards non-paywalled sites and, for some reason, The Telegraph. I’ve been trying the Reuters app recently and that looks quite good. Independent for the most part and has a lot of world news coming in most minutes.

I asked for a sub to New Scientist for Christmas. Whole family clubbed together. Best Christmas present yet.

Am about to chuck money at the Guardian. Would like to get FT for balance but a bit much for annual sub – still buy the odd copy though.

Funnily enough was considering joining the guardian membership this morning. Yet again, decided against it. It doesn’t seem to offer anything in return. Though we do buy it every Saturday.

Twitter. I find that if you spend a bit of time working out who to follow you can get a very good, impartial picture of the world.

Forgot to mention Russia Today.

That’s hilarious sometimes. 👿

we subscribe to the NYT

but the rest is the usual
Guardian
BBC
Telegraph
Independant
and now and then keep tabs on Vancouver Sun and Times of India

Twitter. I find that if you spend a bit of time working out who to follow you can get a very good, impartial picture of the world.

Yep. But what I was really hunting for was more depth rather than vast quantities of info. to trawl through. I like twitter but it can be an even worse time suck than Facebook

Funnily enough was considering joining the guardian membership this morning.

Why didn’t you in the end? I’m not particularly pushing Guardian rather than anyone else but given that it is on a few peoples lists so must be producing something worth while, what is the barrier to folks paying?

leffeboy, as far as I can tell, you don’t get anything for the money. All the news is for free on their site, so the subscriptions is effectively a gift to them. Technically they do give you special offers on writing courses and things like that, but nothing I’m interested in.

I use the Guardian to find a narrative they’re pushing and then follow it through on other news sources. If it’s a worthwhile story it will be in the cycle for a while. So I’d buy the weekend paper, go through that, and whatever you think is important you can follow.

If you’re looking for in-depth UK political news covering important themes (healthcare, foreign affairs, government projects etc), then Private Eye is hard to beat. The sub was definitely worth it.

Economist digital sub here: not cheap, but value for money IMO.

leffeboy, as far as I can tell, you don’t get anything for the money.

Yep, the news is free and as far as I can see you don’t get anything extra either. But they run at a loss so it can’t keep going on like that forever unless a suitable way of raising revenue can be found. You see it all over the web with sites asking for donations to keep their services running (e.g. openvttmap) but with the assumption being that once they go there will always be someone else popping up for free

Is it worth paying for even if you don’t get anything extra other that supporting the paper?

My worry is that if that model is advertising based then we lose independent journalism. One of the reasons that I started buying the Singletrack magazine was that I liked the reviews. They didn’t seem paid for and were happy to be rude about pointless products. I’m not sure it’s quite like that any more (although I still don’t believe the reviews are paid for). I hate it when you can no longer tell if what you are reading is journalism or an advertorial

Leffeboy, you make a good point regarding long term funding. I buy the weekend Guardian, so I feel I’ve done my bit. If I didn’t I would probably have been more tempted to join. I’m not ruling the idea out forever, but as things currently stand…I’m out.

The Independent still exists in digital form and is pretty good. Currently on a 2 month free trial and will probably keep it on.

Other than that it is the usual suspects…

Economist subscriber here and I like it. It might just be me but I think the style that they seem to write makes it reasonably easy to work out what is fact and what’s opinion / editorial. They don’t pretend to be impartial.

I must confess I still get the paper copy and read it gradually over the course of a week so it isn’t really online for me although it could be.

The economist is worth the entrance fee as is the spectator…