I'm pretty happy with my Apple News+ subscription.

I had a Boston Globe digital subscription for about 3 years recently and was reading the NYT a lot. They have a scammy thing where some people are paying 10x more for their subscription versus others. It was highly obnoxious to try and quit... I had to argue on the phone with someone for a long long time. Realistically I should have just seen what happened if I told the CC company they were refusing to cancel my subscription and please block the charges on the credit card side.

A big issue I have with a lot of the incumbents is they are claiming we need to support them because they represent old/quality journalism. NYT and the Boston Globe are still better than a lot of online journalism but they have also subtly absorbed a lot of the worst qualities of online nonsense no different than other sources. They often inject a political angle into every single story even if it is completely unrelated to that because they know it will make subscribers argue in the comments and increase "engagement" and generate extra ad revenue. The Globe had certain writers who it seems were explicitly told their job was to write on a large # of subjects but always subtly color the article to bait conservatives. Despite MA being quite blue there are seemingly a lot of frustrated conservatives who can't quit the Globe and the globe intentionally baits them to make them angry.

I really like how the aggregate subscription model allows you to see things from different sources so you're not always ingesting a particular papers subtle or not so subtle biases. I just do think it is weak for local news.

We have a local news website for our town which is pretty good.. but it is very local in interest.

I get my news the old fashioned way. I go hang with the homeless people at the local park. They have a better grasp of what is going on and happening in the local area and in the world in general.

I think the last news paper I got was around 2000, maybe earlier. They are nothing but nostalgia now. I do think local news is important for democracy though and I am happy that we have a couple online local news sources. I find it amazing that actual print has even lasted this long, even for the big papers.

I just looked up the cost of digital subscription to our major newspaper- the Des Moines Register.
A digital subscription is $15 per month. As much as I would like to pay that, so I can feel like I am supporting local journalism and whatnot, thats a lot of money for something that I would read maybe 20 times a month.

I wouldnt log in each morning to read, in the way physical papers were read over coffee.
I would just read that link instead of the 10 other links I can read from free local sites when I google something local.

Yeah, $180 a year doesnt seem like a lot, but I dont think the value is there.


...funny enough, I was just charged $30 this morning for an app subscription for the next year. Its to some plant identification app that I downloaded and had 2 free weeks to use. It helped in the moment, I identified the plant as a week and got a bunch of it out of a flower garden, but forgot to cancel the app!
And here I am saying $180 for a year of actual news wouldnt be worth it.

People are funny.

Its a stretch to call magazines 'old school bots'. They had advertisements, but the ads werent targeted and were easily flipped past.
Further, the articles in the magazines also werent targeted- it was the same info for anyone who picked up the magazine.

There was no tracking of activity, no tracking of time spent on a topic, no tracking of interests to target market.

And yet DeSantis' campaign announcement on Twitter was a comical disaster.

Im not saying Twitter wont improve in its ability to push large format content, but it would be surprising if it ever gets better than YouTube.

Yah I really think this is what has changed with a lot of online journalism.

They are so completely caught up in thinking about what pleases the sponsors, what makes people hang around on the page, what generates the most ad clicks, what drives SEO, etc.. that it is a major factor in what they actually write in the articles at this point.

Ha. Way back in about 94, I was working in production at Time Life, and, since they were the salad days, they shipped us all up to Lake George at the Sagamore for three days of food, drink, music, and a few lectures, the latter just for tax purposes. One little lecture/conference was all about how to combat the evil Postal service and it's ever increasing rates, which was our shipping method. Went up on average about ten percent a year, which was quite a hit to the business. So, one important guy proposes that we deliver the magazine to the consumer directly by phone line (pre broadband internet), and they print it out! Genius! No more printing costs, no more USPS. Another reason that company doesnt exist anymore.

Well, I did say old school.

Yeah, with so much going on in so many people's lives, there isnt enough bandwidth for everyone to be aware of everything.
My sister and I were really active as kids in activities and sports, and my parents have said they would be overwhelmed if they had to manage the family calendars that my sister or I have.
More media pushed out, more content available to consume, more expectations at work, more work assigned with less assistance, etc etc.


Someone might not know a storm is expected later in the day, but they are up to date on the political unrest in Senegal.
That sort of thing wouldnt have happened 30 years ago because of changes in connectivity.
Just because someone doesnt know about a random weather event or local event doesnt mean they arent aware of things going on- they just happen to consume different info than you.

Examples please of these sites where accurate news and information abounds.

I see graphs like the one below all the time, and yet when I read articles from sites that are in the middle peak, I frequently cock my head in distrust and wonder how accurate something is thats been reported.
I am not a conspiracy nut and I consistently consume what one side often calls 'MSM news'. Yet even I get spidey tingles a lot of times.
Also, these are major news outlets and not local. The lack of local journalism is what I think a lot of people lament.

https://my.lwv.org/sites/default/fil...?itok=Em7_kUpp

I love YouTube. I've been too lazy to sign up for ad free, but, it's an awesome media outlet. And I dare say that it's news content is much more engaging than the awful, sanitized and obviously biased material on cable news, and the ratings, or views, are indicative that a whole lot of people think the same. At last count, Carlson got over 90 million (!) views of that ten minute show he did the other day. 90 million! You can scoff at that, but, trust me, media executives are not. CNN is back to management by committee, because they fired one of the few industry people who would take the CEO position, and FOX may never find somebody to fill the old Tucker spot with anything close to his popularity. What's really pathetic is the way both outlets thought they could actually get people to pay for the same content on the internet they were giving away for free. That didnt work out well. Last gasp.

I guess it all depends on which side you're on, but, in general, trust is low.


https://today.yougov.com/topics/poli...ets-trust-poll

A Weather outlet is the most trusted media? Good lord that should speak volumes.


There is a joke in all of this about how they dont even get their predictions right half the time, yet they are still the most trusted!

90 million views? There are 330million in this country. 75 million are under 18 so remove them. Half the rest are Democrats so remove them.
That means 71% of Republicans watched him on Twitter? Come on now.
++yes I recognize that many liberals would have hate-watched. But that is a small amount.
Does it count repeat views?...like if I watch it 10 times, is that 10 views or 1 unique view?

Regardless, that dude is untouchable to his fans. They straight up dont care how morally corrupt or how much of a liar he is. The guy has flat out made fun of his viewers, said he doesnt believe stuff he pushes, and hates on the hand that feeds him- but his fans simply dont care. Its a really interesting analysis in how willing we are to compartmentalize and justify in order to find support in our views.
^ I genuinely dont think talking about him is political, but if the mods see otherwise, so be it. I view it as a societal discussion.