[guhidalg]

I agree, but nothing worth having is free. NYT and other news outlets have to ultimately pay reporters to go out into the world and do the work. The reporters are not priests, and the NYT is not a church that lives off donations and tax exemptions. They need money to operate, and you may disagree with how they try to collect that money (paywall) but that doesn't solve their funding problem.

How would you pay for news otherwise?

[Ntrails]

> How would you pay for news otherwise?

You could subsidise news via "public service" style stipends. Much like having a government owned "independent" news service (eg the BBC) this comes with a high risk of corruption. Don't bite the hand that feeds and all that.

You could implement a much lower friction non-recurring payment system. I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription.

Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets.

[iamacyborg]

> I'd be far more tempted to drop a little money on a fixed term (5 articles, 1 day, ???) setup than a subscription.

I believe that’s often referred to as a newspaper, which should be available in all good newsagents on any given day.

[Ntrails]

I'll just pop out to the nearest newsagent that stocks the NYT so I can engage with a news aggregator

(But yes, that is the model)

[lotsofpulp]

> Realistically, I am not paying for more than 1 long running sub. And there are > that number of solid outlets.

This is somewhat what Apple News+ works like, but I doubt most news orgs want to be held captive by Apple.