More and more websites are going to a for-pay subscription model, saying that advertising rates just don't pay the bills. Many might have a free trial, or allow you # number of articles free per month, but fundamentally you need to pay to have full access. Companies like the New York Times or Washington Post have been on this model for awhile, but I was reminded of this when I noticed that Slate went to a subscription model recently (when by immediate reaction was - who would pay for Slate?).
Are there are websites that people are paying for? Are they worthwhile? Any that aren't worthwhile?
I have a subscription for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Oh, and Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.
Quote from: merithyn on April 23, 2020, 12:34:46 PM
I have a subscription for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Oh, and Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.
While I can't control where the conversation goes, I was more interested in any print subscription, since those had usually been free on the internet, and only in the last few years has the subscription model been tried.
The Economist. I have both the digital and paper version as they are the same price IIRC.
How much, and is it worth it?
NYTimes, Globe and Mail and Economist. I also pay a subscription for the Guardian which is currently free.
@ BB the big advantage to the Economist is by the time the paper copy comes to this part of the world it is almost a week out of date - with the electronic version you can read it hot off the electronic presses.
So the only one I pay for is The Athletic. I found a sale and paid for one year for $20 or $25 I think.
Obviously I wouldn't recommend paying for a sports-based website right now, but pre-pandemic it was pretty good. It has some national coverage, but most of it's content is hyper-local, where it has reporters on the ground in various cities that cover only their own specific teams. And in that coverage it can't be beat.
I would like to pick up a national news page or two, but not sure which would be good, and certainly can't pay for a whole bunch of them.
The Athletic and London Review of Books (though I get paper copies too). Through work the FT and some trade press.
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
Just Washington Post. I also get the physical Sunday paper.
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
I used to have a sub to the Athletic but I've let it lapse since it's much cheaper to do that & be a new subscriber than renew.
I have no other subscription.
@BB Athletic has french coverage for Montreal. Pretty awesome of them.
I get WaPo, NYT, LRB, NYRB, LARB, The Atlantic, the New Yorker through the University. I haven't decided yet which one I will drop once I need to pay for them myself.
I pay for Le Devoir (a Quebec newspaper), and a website, Pan M 360, which is dedicated to music critique, because the place dedicated to it in print (or e-version of print) has dwindled dramatically.
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
I don't need coverage of La Liga, there's plenty of that over here :P
I'm looking for good, non click-baity, coverage of yank sports. Grantland used to scratch that itch, but The Ringer isn't quite there.
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:25:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
I don't need coverage of La Liga, there's plenty of that over here :P
I'm looking for good, non click-baity, coverage of yank sports. Grantland used to scratch that itch, but The Ringer isn't quite there.
It's not really the place for just national-level, day-to-day scores and whatnot. If you're looking for that I think just ESPN would be your best bet.
But if you want super-indepth coverage of specific teams it's wonderful.
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
As a fan of a non-top 6 side I like their coverage a lot.
Plus some very good "other"/generalist football writers like Michael Cox and Rapha Honigstein.
WaPo, NYT, and the Atlantic.
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:29:11 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:25:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
I don't need coverage of La Liga, there's plenty of that over here :P
I'm looking for good, non click-baity, coverage of yank sports. Grantland used to scratch that itch, but The Ringer isn't quite there.
It's not really the place for just national-level, day-to-day scores and whatnot. If you're looking for that I think just ESPN would be your best bet.
But if you want super-indepth coverage of specific teams it's wonderful.
I'll take the free trial once there's actual sports going and see, I guess. I'm interested in basketball, MLS, and kinda the NFL, but the only yank teams I support are the Giants and the Knicks, and I'm not sure I want to read detailed coverage of them :lol:
Just The Economist for print publications. It's definitely worth the money, and their book review section has ended up costing me more than the subscription. :D
The Athletic. The Globe and Mail. Foreign Affairs. Prog.
The Economist and Jacobin. Both lapsed though. ;)
I used to be subbed to NYT, Wired, and New Yorker. However, I cancelled them because I didn't peruse them enough.
I don't pay any subscription. All the medias I consult are "free" (Radio-Canada, La Presse, Le Soleil).
WaPo and NYT for me. I also used to subscribe to Medium, as I found a lot of interesting articles there for a while, but eventually canceled as the quality of articles got to be unacceptably low. The main reason to pay for access is so that I don't have to filter out nonsense myself.
Economist paper
What I found interesting was how US newspaper subs seem cheaper than German language ones. NYT was $14 IIRC. German paper Die Zeit or Austrian paper Der Standard are both 20-22 EUR.
No.
I can't even bring myself to pay for digital books.
I buy digital games these days, but try not to.
For a lot of them though, I can "get by" on free articles per month / using private mode. I probably use about 3 different devices regularly (work computer, home computer, phone), so that's three times the free articles.
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:32:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:29:11 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:25:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 23, 2020, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 23, 2020, 01:03:09 PM
New York Times. I also got subs to FT and Bloomberg through work, but I wouldn't sub to them on my own.
I've been entertaining The Athletic for some time, might go for it once there's some actual sport.
I just checked - supposedly they were going to start covering La Liga as of this month!
Not sure what kind of coverage there would be there (in particular since it is an english-language website), but I think it's coverage of the Premier League is top notch).
I don't need coverage of La Liga, there's plenty of that over here :P
I'm looking for good, non click-baity, coverage of yank sports. Grantland used to scratch that itch, but The Ringer isn't quite there.
It's not really the place for just national-level, day-to-day scores and whatnot. If you're looking for that I think just ESPN would be your best bet.
But if you want super-indepth coverage of specific teams it's wonderful.
I'll take the free trial once there's actual sports going and see, I guess. I'm interested in basketball, MLS, and kinda the NFL, but the only yank teams I support are the Giants and the Knicks, and I'm not sure I want to read detailed coverage of them :lol:
At The Ringer they have an ongoing rib on the Knicks, even from contributors who are admitedly Knicks fans. Nowadays they're doing a series on the drafts, reviewing and redrafting them, and they have a permanent section called "How the Knicks fucked up". :lol:
I refuse to pay for any subscription.
Ammoguide
National Geographic paper, it gives me access to all the website contents.
L.
I'm pretty cheap, but I signed up to the New York Times for $4 a month Canadian. However, I might cancel out at some point. Not sure if it's worth the cost versus just what I can get from free websites.
I have one for a Boston paper. It used to be free but then it went to subscription. I wanted something local so went with paying for it. It's cheap though. I also have a subscription to a local multi-town paper to see local news, an actual delivered news paper.
Quote from: Syt on April 23, 2020, 02:28:47 PM
What I found interesting was how US newspaper subs seem cheaper than German language ones. NYT was $14 IIRC. German paper Die Zeit or Austrian paper Der Standard are both 20-22 EUR.
I know magazine subs are generally cheaper in US vs say here in UK.
I only have a newspaper subscription, I get the weekend edition in print plus full digital access.
I pay for Google Drive to backup my photos.
Quote from: Monoriu on April 23, 2020, 03:11:45 PM
I refuse to pay for any subscription.
and that's why good journalism is dead.
Have WaPo and WSJ access through work. I skip the NYT.
Personally, I sub to The Athletic and The Atlantic.
My wife also gets the weekend edition of the WaPo but she said our sub expired a while back, yet we still receive the weekend papers. :ph34r:
Quote from: FunkMonk on April 24, 2020, 06:25:26 AM
Have WaPo and WSJ access through work. I skip the NYT.
Personally, I sub to The Athletic and The Atlantic.
My wife also gets the weekend edition of the WaPo but she said our sub expired a while back, yet we still receive the weekend papers. :ph34r:
How do you keep them apart?
Quote from: Zanza on April 24, 2020, 05:50:10 AM
I pay for Google Drive to backup my photos.
If we're including this then also a VPN and a backup service.
Quote from: Maladict on April 24, 2020, 06:42:55 AM
Quote from: Zanza on April 24, 2020, 05:50:10 AM
I pay for Google Drive to backup my photos.
If we're including this then also a VPN and a backup service.
Then we can also include which podcasters or youtubers we support on Patreon? :hmm:
Are we including camgirls?
We have a dead trees subscription to the Space Coast edition of Florida Today; which gives us access to their online content. It's not really in depth; but it is the only good source for local news I've found.
I'm a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as well as a member of the IEEE Communication Society - which gives me access to a number of on line publications and white paper. The general magazine (The Spectrum) is like the bizarro world version of a news magazine: everything is getting better, technology will solve all our problems, Harvard's college of engineering doesn't actually suck (or at least not as much as you might think it does), and soon we'll all have those exoskeleton suits from alien. I don't think the comm soc publications would be of interest to anyone else, but I find them interesting to see some of the far out ideas coming from academia and research labs.
Quote from: Josephus on April 24, 2020, 06:21:10 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 23, 2020, 03:11:45 PM
I refuse to pay for any subscription.
and that's why good journalism is dead.
They brought some of it on themselves. Facebook lieing about video was unpredictable but the Newspaper that want both subs money & run ads everywhere can fuck right off.