[monkeynotes]

People used to leave newspapers in the trash, on the train, all over the place. Anyone could pick them up and read for free. I think it's reasonable for folks to carry this attitude into the digital age. People feel like news is something to share, it's not the source of creative expression, it's facts and as such we feel entitled to know the facts about our world and what is happening that might affect us.

[zwischenzug]

That newspaper was likely paid for by someone, and could only be read by one person at a time.

[Kerb_]

While I'm well aware I'm being pedantic, me and my brothers would share the comics together while my parents kept the news, up to 4 of us consuming 1 paper at a time. Realistically, the reading limit was due to the physical properties of the object and not an inherent property of information to be consumed through one avenue at a time

[anhner]

And what if the person picking up the paper would stand up and shout the content of the article so all the people on the train would hear?

[svachalek]

Reminds me of the movie News of the World. The main character's job is going from town to town, reading newspapers aloud.

[monkeynotes]

The news on a website is paid for by someone, else they would not be in business. And I only have one screen, I don't share it. The difference is physical vs. digital copies. A physical copy costs $.10 a digital copy costs $.0000001 (made up numbers), the business can take a loss of numerous digital copies before hitting the cost of one copy of the physical paper.

The problem is really that their business model sucks. They are working with fewer and fewer advertisers and much more competition and expecting business like they had before. And so we have a business that is attempting to fix itself with paywalls which don't work 100% of the time, but good enough to get the found newspaper analogy.

[edgyquant]

No it isn’t reasonable and people not paying for that newspaper read anymore is the reason all news is sensationalist opinion pieces today.

[monkeynotes]

BS, the reason we have sensational opinion pieces goes back before the internet. People are bored with mundane lives and love drama. Drama sells, 90s newsrooms found this out and cable news out competed established real journalism. The rest is a race to the bottom.

The internet simply exacerbated this as anyone could publish news on an equal platform to the big boys. Then we get paid-per-click, and that drives click-bait.

Stealing information absolutely is not responsible for that. People pay for junk, and that's the reason. We don't eat junk food because it's given away.