[_abox]

Did it work though? I've never actually signed up to a paper like that.

I've had a subscription to the guardian online but they didn't have a paywall. Especially because of that I got to know the content they brought better. If they'd had a paywall I'd have just closed the tab after the first three articles and never have gotten to the point of thinking "hey this is really a site that I identify with".

However when the whole Brexit thing started it became too big a topic and it became annoying as I'm not UK based so I stopped renewing. Before that time they had much deeper coverage of topics I was interested in

[hmlongco]

This is the main problem today. Good journalism costs money, and that money can come from ads, but that's usually not enough to pay the freight. Hence paywalls.

Or... it can be free.

But it also costs money to run a site. Especially if you're serving up millions of pages of content and images.

So... someone is paying the bills. The question is who, and why?

Bottom line is that "free" news either comes from someone selling you and your personal information, or it comes from someone with an agenda.

And that's the problem I spoke of earlier. You're either getting information from a recommendation engine designed to promote "engagement" and as such tends towards serving up controversy... or you're getting your information from someone with a specific agenda... which means they're feeding you what they want you to think.

[_abox]

I agree, but a paywall is not the answer IMO.

I'm not going to sign up to a site to read only a few random articles. And the number of free ones they usually offer is way too low to really get a feel for what the site offers. Most sites I visit already present a paywall when I click through a few links from hacker news or reddit. This way I don't really feel any engagement with the site and I'm not tempted to ever sign up for it.

The Guardian didn't have a paywall at that time, but the high quality of their articles and the strength of reporting on topics that interest me (privacy in particular) convinced me to take out a subscription. I wouldn't have experienced that quality if they had a paywall, they'd just have pissed me off after the first few and I'd never have come back. A newspaper is its own advertisement but if you can't read it you won't be swayed.

So what is the answer? I think added value. Extra deep content you can click through on or something, PDFs, things like that. It's a touch premise though, if you offer too much for free most people aren't going to pay for it. But put too many things behind a paywall and you'll be alienating potential customers.

Unfortunately the Guardian kind of lost its appeal as an EU-wide privacy-centric paper for me, as Brexit made it turn its focus inward just like the rest of Britain did. As I have no ties with the UK it lost its relevance to me.

I'm still looking for something that can fill that role now. EU-focused, privacy-first, progressive. I subscribed to Ars for a while too but I found it too 'popular'/'light' on the tech side and too US-centric (not a bad thing, just not my interest). If anyone else has a suggestion I'd appreciate it :)