[toyg]

Media channels get paid even when they are free: in goodwill, reputation, visibility, etc etc - all that stuff they are so keen to bestow on their workers in the lower organizational rings.

Regardless, the guilt trip you're so keen to induce would maybe trigger if I could pay these folks by article, rather than with feudalistic subscriptions that are notoriously hard to cancel. As it is, my conscience is unblemished.

[xibalba]

> if I could pay these folks by article

Ah! This is good logic. Next time I'm at a restaurant, after service and food have been rendered, I will say, "You won't let me pay in the amount and manner in which I want, so I'm not going to pay at all!" Thanks for the tip!

> all that stuff they are so keen to bestow on their workers in the lower organizational rings

So two wrongs make a right? Come on. These are ethics that are intuitively grasped by grade school children.

> Media channels get paid even when they are free: in goodwill, reputation, visibility

Oh good. So when it comes time to pay their server bill, office rent, employee payroll, etc. etc. they will just forward goodwill, reputation, and visibility on. What is the current conversion between reputation and USD these days?

The basic and inexorable truth is this: journalism isn't free. Never has been, never will be. Especially good journalism. Childish, self serving rationalizations on why its not only OK but "good" to never pay for it are exactly what's got us in the current mess we're in (worse and worse clickbait, the slow merging of editorial and hard news, the rapid merging of monetization and 'news', etc. etc.)

> my conscience is unblemished

Might be worth a deeper examination. Seriously. What would it do to the incomes in your field if people were able to just take your work product without paying? How would you feel if those takers said to you, "my conscience is unblemished because <reason>"?

[toyg]

> This is good logic.

Definitely better logic than bringing unrelated business models into the conversation. Do you take a subscription, when you enter a restaurant? Will they refuse to stop charging you after you stop calling at their fine establishment?

I expect the NY Times bullpen would be disappointed to know it has such poor defenders among the public. Surely their material helps develop better logical skills. Then again...

> So two wrongs make a right?

More like two can play the market game. Except they have access to better capital markets than most, so there is a natural power imbalance to correct.

> So when it comes time to pay their server bill, office rent, employee payroll, etc. etc. they will just forward goodwill

No, they will forward the money of their wealthy and influential old-money owners: https://web.archive.org/web/20201101011614/https://www.vanit...

In other cases, it will be the money of new-money owners, Russian oligarchs, cult abusers, etc etc. But not to their interns, of course - for them it's goodwill and love all the way, I bet.

> journalism isn't free.

Indeed it isn't - in most cases you're paying for it every day through the political choices that these privately-owned media channels support and legitimize.

> What would it do to the incomes in your field if people were able to just take your work product without paying?

It depends - when the value of my product is indeed that it gets in the hands of everyone that matters, regardless of whether they paid for it or not, there are many ways I could leverage this influence into other stuff behind the scenes. Which is indeed what most of the media-supporting barons tend to do.

One of the best tricks the devil played on people is convincing them that conservative media like the NYTimes is a bastion of progressive society.

[rat9988]

Artists are paid by exposition I guess!

I'm not sure why using the archive for stealing has become the norm here.

[toyg]

Stealing is the wrong word, but then we've had this conversation for 30 years so clearly you know what you're doing. If you must, "freeloading" would probably be a better term.

> Artists are paid by exposition I guess!

If it allowed them to pick political candidates and set the nation's agenda, yeah, I guess they would be.

[rat9988]

> so clearly you know what you're doing

??

> freeloading

No I chose stealing for a reason. Freeloading is not the right term. I'm not a native english speaker, freeloading seems to mean "to impose upon another's generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost or responsibility involved". It's not the right word to convey my idea.

[toyg]

It's definitely closer than "stealing", which implies the deprivation of a resource - something that clearly isn't the case in the digital realm.

> "to impose upon another's generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost or responsibility involved"

This is precisely what another user here accused me of, so I would say it fits very well.