[jacquesm]

You'd hope that the content produced by newspapers would rise above the level of reddit leading to people wanting to pay for the content directly.

Of course if people are looking for entertainment then that's a different story and reddit may be serious competition.

[TeMPOraL]

One would hope. The problem is, content produced on Reddit (and HN) is way better than content produced by newspapers, by a very simple mechanism: someone posts an article to Reddit/HN, people start debunking all the bullshit, misinterpretations and lies journalists wrote in that article.

Newspapers have a lot of trust to regain with people. But then again, I suppose the general population doesn't give a rat's ass about the truth, and want to read only something shocking to use as a "social object" (i.e. something you can start discussing with other people you meet).

[jacquesm]

That's a good point, the value of the comments on articles is often >> the value of the article itself.

[cwyers]

Well, Hacker News is the exception, not the rule. Most Internet comment sections are unmitigated dumpster fires. Some are even worse than that. Even if you restrict yourself to the really good comments and discussions on the Internet, if you cut off the oxygen from the articles I think the value dries up real fast.