zlacker

If subs-only model improves reporting and rids the pubs of propagandizing, I’m all for it. The price we pay now for free news is too high -click bait, us vs them, persistent shallow dives into inane subjects is taking its toll.

>>mc32+(OP)
> If subs-only model improves reporting and rids the pubs of propagandizing, I’m all for it.

Yeah, if.

>>mc32+(OP)
Do you think the average man is going to rely on a news provider like Reuters after this change?

My father reads a lot of third party news but actually fact checks on Reuters. A lot of friends and colleagues skip third party news and read directly from Reuters, because it is free. With this change, I doubt a great many of them will continue with Reuters as a source, and would rather stop at a third-party localized news outlet.

Reuters provides facts, and very little opinion. People believe that facts ought to be free, and only worthy opinions are worth paying for.

>>fakeda+N6
I don’t know.

People used to pay for newspaper subs before. In real terms, this price is relatively cheap. Gathering facts requires time, money and able reporters.

I know people got spoiled for a while with free news. It’s time to go back to reality and pay for good news reporters.

>>JKCalh+c4
I'd argue it would increase bias, since now they need to cater to their audience even harder.

>>fakeda+N6
> Reuters provides facts, and very little opinion.

It's perfectly possible to provide facts in a highly opinionated way. The world we live in is a messy smear of mostly-contradictory evidence [1], so media can influence perceptions enormously by being selective in its reporting of that evidence.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAy7jujW4AAHhuu?format=png&name=...

>>mc32+g9
Except that's not going to happen. Nearly every relative, friend and acquaintance of mine was a paying subscriber of the news before, but all have since moved to free digital, even though all of them can easily afford to pay for the rounding error. Expecting that whole set of people to go back to paying for news after more than a decade though, is going to be hard. People don't feel that news should be a paid commodity, simply because it's a commodity now. If they Google a topic and arrive at a pay walled site, they'll simply move onto another site that gives it for free. And this is in a world where 50%+ of the audience gets their news third party from social media, and not even news websites in the first place.

>>mrec+Ph
Reuters has maintained a very neutral facts-based reporting style compared to other similar wire sources such as Bloomberg and AP.