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by ericd 2302 days ago
I've been wanting someone to do this idea (spotify for news) for years. But they really need to get one of the heavy hitters with paywalls (NY Times, The Economist, Financial Times, WaPo, or WSJ).

But maybe it's worth paying just to show publishers that it's viable. It's a rough chicken/egg problem.
4 comments
arctictony 2302 days ago
CEO of Scroll here. It's hard with the big guys when you get started, they tend to move slow. However, the NYT and WSJ are both investors in the company so we're hopeful we can bring them in over the next year.
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ericd 2302 days ago
Great! I wish you all the luck in the world, I’ve been wishing for many years that someone with connections in the news world would make this happen.

I’m hopeful that fixing the business model of news on the web will cause them to step back a bit from polarizing clickbait and back towards factual reporting, which I think should help reduce the polarization in the political sphere.

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fiddlerwoaroof 2302 days ago
Blendle has them on a "pay for what you read" basis, that I really like
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ReverseCold 2302 days ago
If blendle makes a chrome/ff extension that redirects you from the website to blendle it'd be perfect. Right now I have to go to the app and search for the article I want, and then the article doesn't show up in search, and then I give up.
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notatoad 2302 days ago
even if blendle would just let you search for an actual URL, that'd be great.
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_ps6d 2302 days ago
I mentioned this in my separate top-level reply, but Scroll doesn't include getting you past paywalls: https://intercom.help/scroll/en/articles/3344875-does-scroll...
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ericd 2302 days ago
Ah thanks, that's a rough blow for this idea.

I worry that this idea won't work until

- Someone can prove that the increase in number of paid subscribers will offset the decrease in $/sub, and...

- The subscription company is effectively owned by the big news orgs, so that they feel comfortable effectively handing over control of their subscriber base. Similar to how Hulu was started as a partnership between a few big media companies.

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pozdnyshev_ 2302 days ago
Just use firefox + bypass paywalls. It's free and good.
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