[troyvit]

> You have to demonstrate it in some way. Providing half your content for free while keeping half behind a paywall seems like a perfectly reasonable strategy to address this discoverability problem.

I feel like 404media is doing a good job at that. They irritate me sometimes but they break a lot of great news with a tiny staff and have an indomitable social media presence (at least on bluesky) that really gets people talking about them. Don't get me wrong, I'll never pay for their work because I feel like they get a little user hostile sometimes[1], but people less curmudgeonly probably are subscribing.

[1] https://www.404media.co/we-dont-want-your-password-3/

[roughly]

> they break a lot of great news with a tiny staff <…> I'll never pay for their work because I feel like they get a little user hostile sometimes

Y’all choose the weirdest hills to die on.

[troyvit]

Eh, there's choosing a hill and there's voting with your wallet, and I'm doing the latter. Judging by the article I linked, if anybody's choosing a hill to die on it's 404.