[jakarta]

I've rarely seen a pay wall story end up on the front page of HN, with the exception of the occasional WSJ article - where people are quick to show how anyone can access it via Google News.

I see a lot of people complaining when NYT articles show up -- but they are often mistakenly thinking it's a paywall. It's not, it's just a free registration barrier. Even when the NYT goes metered in 2011, free members will still be allowed a certain amount of articles per month (similar to the Financial Times articles).

Moreover though, I'd like to point out that most newspapers are extremely affordable for students - almost every publication offers a generous student discount.

When I was a student I had subscriptions to the WSJ and Foreign Affairs because they were pretty cheap, WSJ was something like $15 for 3.75 months and Foreign Affairs was $20 for an entire year. NYTimes Student (M-F) is only $0.50 an issue. The Economist costs only $24 for 3.75 months... or $1.60 an issue. In almost all cases you end up saving between 70-80% when using the student subscriptions.

Plus you can keep subscribing at the same rates even after graduating -- you might have to fill in some bogus information about what course you are taking but it still works.

So, I don't know. I feel like the cost of student subscriptions isn't a whole lot and in that case maybe it's worth subscribing just to be well informed about the world. Certain pubs like the WSJ, FT, or Foreign Affairs will probably never be totally free and in that case, given the small fee they charge I'd be willing to trade eating pizza one day for ramen.

[dsplittgerber]

It's different when you're outside the US, though. A lot of magazines don't seem to cater to customers outside the US, which seems crazy to me, especially in the age of Kindle et al.

I tend to read a lot and it always bugs me to find out that magazines charge about 200-300% on top just for shipping it to EU countries. Also, there is nearly always no digital alternative - no WSJ on the Kindle in Europe, no Barrons in the EU, no digital student rebate for Foreign Affairs, huge shipping costs for Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine etc.

[jakarta]

That's a really good point - the student subscription route does not work internationally. I don't really know if there is any way around that.

One thing I'll note is that often, if you subscribe to WSJ or Foreign Affairs they also throw in a online log in. Presumably, if your billing information is accepted you could have the print subscriptions mailed somewhere random while you use the online login information. But I've never tried it myself.

[netaddict]

For avoiding NY Times wall, if you are using Chrome, you can just right click the link and "open in new incognito window".

[sfgfdhgfdshdhhd]

"Free registration required"-walls are right up there beside paywalls on the annoy-o-meter. Anyway, the NYT ones pretty clearly ask for payment, though they seem to be different for everybody.

[jakarta]

They don't ask for payment. And the registration walls might be annoying, but you're getting news for free. It's a trade off. There's content in the NYT that you wont find on Google News, and maybe that's not compelling for you but it seems like most people are willing to register for that free access.

[jokermatt999]

Actually, most NYT articles can be read through Google. I'm not sure about multi-page articles, but I can say for certain that if you go through Google, you won't see a registration pop-up.

[zck]

Add "inurl:pagewanted=all" to your search query.

[weel]

Try bugmenot.