[TheMagicHorsey]

I don't know why people are so opposed to newspapers showing advertisements.

How are they supposed to operate their organizations without funds?

Or do people seriously think government funding of papers is the way to go?

I happen to think that state funded news papers would be worse than papers funded by advertisers. At least with advertisers you have many different sources of funding. With the state you have just one boss, and you can't print stories that would piss him off.

[acdha]

I wish more places would adopt Ars Technica's model where you can pay to not see ads. I think ad antipathy is a long-term trend the industry should adjust to but it would break the revenue model at some places – e.g. it costs more to for an online-only New York Times subscription than for online+paper because the business has been dominated by print advertisements for so long.

[eli]

I wish this model would work, but I don't think it does in practice.

For one thing, it drives the value of the ads you do show way down to commodity prices. Think about it: no advertiser is going to spend big bucks on ads that are literally only shown to the cheapest and least engaged members of your audience.

It also misaligns the incentives. Now the ads function like the "nag screen" on old shareware apps. The site's revenue is tied to the ads being annoying enough that you'll want to get rid of them.

[acdha]

Good point: I think there could be a stable equilibrium on the other side but the transition might be impossible.