I’ve been kicking them money for a while now. Only infrequently, but maybe $25 at a time because I appreciate their journalism. This makes me wonder if I’ll donate again. I’m not opposed to paying for content (I have numerous subscriptions). I just feel better about it when things are open and accessible.
You’re donating to keep the site free for casual use, not to bank roll them to be unlimited free. This approach the guardian have introduced is absolutely fair use.
Sometimes I give a bit to Wikipedia, maybe do that instead? It claims to be not for profit but I’ve seen accusations against that. I don’t really know, but I do know I use it quite a lot.
125 is approximately 4 a day, so it’s really not that much. I suspect a lot are just opening articles (eg, by accidentally swiping sideways) rather than fully reading them too.
I don’t know man, if you are reading the guardian that much it might be time to start paying, it’s not like they are asking an extortionate amount from you either. Especially if you want to support the newspaper as it’s not a super profitable business to begin with.
The financial times is £35 a month on the cheapest subscription they offer so you could be paying much more.
To be clear, I’m not against paying for it - they do fantastic journalism and it’s worth supporting them. It’s just a surprise that they’ve implemented this given their stance has previously been very anti-paywall, instead making their money through other means.
In terms of the numbers, the usage to hit the paywall is about 4 articles a day, and they send out on average around 3 breaking news notifications a day so you just need to click on all of those to come very close to the limit. That might just mean that they send out too many notifications though!
That’s fair enough, who knows what changed at the guardian to cause this feature. Perhaps they just wanted to make some more profit, perhaps they are down on revenue from other means. Who knows. It is unusual for them to make this move after being anti-paywall you’re right. However they are definitely giving a decent amount of free articles in comparison to most other reputable newspapers.
Also, this is for people who've installed the app. For me, installing an app implies a dedication to the site or service. So they've installed the app, read 150 articles, and are reading more than 50 a month? Pay the guys.
Yeah, I read it in a browser. It started restricting my access to compete articles so I had a think and decided I’d pay for it. I don’t read it loads and I’m not rich so I pay IIRC £2 a month. Problem solved. Real journalism seems to be having a hard time these days, and I can see why - back in the days before everything was online I would buy a physical newspaper every day. So news media have lost the income from all those people like me who stopped buying newspapers, they’ve got to make it up through advertising or through a pay-for-content model.
I don’t like paywalls because I don’t like the idea that information should be restricted to those who can afford to buy it. But TBF that was the way it was back when you had to physically purchase a newspaper. The alternative is a load of intrusive advertising. Or articles written cheaply by chatGPT or whatever. Money to pay the wages for journalists to research and write articles has to come from somewhere.
www.shacklefree.inEnter the website into this paywall remover and you will be able to browse. Changing your IP (switching vpn server) should also give you a new “set” of articles to read.
Or you could just pay for quality journalism. Otherwise the likes of the Sun win and the entire industry of journalism will just descend into propaganda pieces and ex MPs pushing whatever particular agenda they’re being paid to push today.
Ooh,. Is pressreader any good? Do you just get a PDF-ish version of the print edition which you have to try and zoom and swipe around to navigate and read, or is it a bit easier to use than that?
That’s the truth, but that tends to be true of any newspaper type news service now (and has been true of lifestyle sections going back as long as I’ve been alive lol).
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