Windy cityMar 4

I have never come upon a paywall while casually browsing the news and thought, "Let me get my credit card out."

It's always, "I don't need to know that badly."

Show threadWill Mar 4
@pheonix @minego In a few months, my very affordable digital subscription to my local newspaper will jump to over $20 per month. It often has news I haven’t seen elsewhere, but my dude, that price seems excessive for what it is! Streaming services are almost half that.
Show threadloucoveyMar 4
@AncTreat5358 @pheonix @minego either you get your news subsidized by advertisers or by readers. Can you think of other options?
Show threadWill Mar 4

@Loucovey @pheonix @minego No it does make sense to support news. It is more of sticker shock for someone on a small fixed income that still wants to know what is going on in the community.

It’d feel better if it were still a local paper, but it’s part of a large conglomerate.

Show threadWill Mar 4
@Loucovey @pheonix @minego I wish there was an option to pay per article read instead plus overhead. I recall that was a thing a few decades ago.
Show threadStryder NotaviMar 5

@AncTreat5358 @Loucovey @pheonix @minego This.

There's too many news sites out there for subscribing to all or even most of them to be a viable option.

Let me pay per article. If you want me to consider a full subscription give me a way to see how much I've spent on articles from you to date - a subscription becomes a lot more compelling if I already know your reporting is solid.

Show threadWill Mar 5
@StryderNotavi Great idea of being able to see article purchases over time.
Show threadStryder NotaviMar 5

@AncTreat5358 A related idea would be the ability to pay a bit after reading the article to create a gift link.

Since people will want to share good reporting, the outlet benefits both monetarily and in reputation from good articles / coverage

I suspect the harder nut to crack will be administering the micropayments themselves. Presumably you'd need some intermediary where people pay into a "wallet" and can then nominate sites to pay (with the actual payments being batched to manage transaction costs).

Show threadloucoveyMar 5
@StryderNotavi @AncTreat5358 you don’t need to subscribe to all of them. Pick one. You will get what you need
Show threadStryder Notavi

@Loucovey True, but there's two challenges here:
* Figuring out which outlets are doing good quality work that I should consider subscribing to (vs those who aren't doing proper fact checking and/or are just cribbing from others original reporting).
* Sometimes theres a single article that's of interest but the outlet in general isn't relevant to me (mostly covers a different geographical area, or focuses mostlt on topics that I don't have an interest in).

In both cases, some way of paying a small fee for a single article would be quite useful.

Mar 6 at 3:17amWeb
Show threadloucoveyMar 6
@StryderNotavi can’t disagree, but that’s why I use Apple News and ground news. That gives me variety and comparison. I also get Al Jazerra and Sky News.