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Screenshot says it. Please recommend alternative Leftist news sources. I am in UK but I read news from anywhere, any language if my browser can access it/translate it.
Here in UK, I have tried The Canary, Novara Media, Byline Times, Morning Star - all have strengths and weaknesses, none are a perfect fit. Still looking for my 'daily paper'.
Thanks!
Nope. That is not the issue.
In UK, media is struggling to raise enough revenue from either ads or subscriptions. Many MSM titles have introduced a paywall where users are forced to fund the service by either commiting to a subscription or turning off ad-bkockers and seeing ads. In contrast, Guardian's 'unique selling point' was that it would 'never' do this which was why people should prefer it to other news sources. Then, without acknowledging what it was doing, Guardian quietly introduced the same paywall as everyone it had criticised. My complaint is not about funding a service but about the hypocrisy of a service saying 'I would never do that' and then quietly doing it.
Moreover, this change is not consistent - you do not always see this paywall when visiting the Guardian. This paywall seems to be in 'trial' stage where Guardian is testing to see how much push-back they get from users. We either push-back or Guardian goes same way as rest of British MSM. That would be an irreversible loss. I think what Guardian is doing is not help its own survival long-term.
I see no difference between Guardian strategy and changes in other media (YouTube or Netflix, for example), where the owners are struggling to generate as much revenue as they expect (as they used to do). Instead of asking why their content is not popular, or why users are leaving/using ways to by-pass ads or subscriptions, they just try to squeeze out as much revenue as they can from those still willing to pay subs or see ads, while their once reliable 'goose who lays golden eggs' slowly stops laying. I say Guardian deserves to die if it does not keep track of what readers want and it is only ensuring its own death by trying to cash in on the remaining goodwill of a dwindling readership instead of attracting readers back or reaching out to new readers.
They are going up a cul-de-sac and it has no good end for Guardian. I cannot save them from themselves so I just have to find alternatives which are better at this than the parts of the industry that are dying out.
Respectfully, your argument seems to simultaneously be that they:
a) need a better source of income, because ads and subscriptions aren't raising enough revenue
b) are acting unreasonably by asking you to allow them to use one of those revenue sources
"Would you rather pay for this service, or have ads on it?" Doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask, frankly. Especially given that it can be trivially avoided with an ad blocker, anyway, and will not prohibit you from reading the article if you do so (this, to me, is the key difference compared to other outlets that have similar requirements).
As far as I can tell, their statement was that they will always make the content available for free. Serving that content with some ads alongside it doesn't violate that policy.
Edit: as an aside, having "my one news source" is a bad way to engage with the media. Every source will have their own priority, biases, errors and blind spots that will change over time; you should have a diverse set of sources, ideally with different mediums.
Per the above, here's some of the sources in my media diet, in no particular order: The Guardian, Byline Times, TLDR News, BBC News (digital & radio), Al Jazeera, Le Monde, the UN, Novara Media, PoliticsJOE, New York Times, Reuters, AP, Financial Times, Bellingcat
Edit: wrt "Centralist [sic] bore me", yeah, sometimes a reasonable take on the news is boring, but important nonetheless. Sorry ๐คท
I would argue that everybody has a line in the sand they don't want to cross.
For most of us, we don't mind ads as long as we can avoid them with adblock. Which honestly just externalizes the problem onto people without it.
It seems to be a reasonable position to not accept a free site with personalized ads, because of the privacy costs.
It's also unfortunate, for the newspaper to go this direction.
Sure, personalised ads can be seen as a form of an invasion of privacy, and everybody has a right to not engage with any organisation for any reason they like. But ads are an imperfect solution to the fact that it's impossible to run a news organisation at that scale on voluntary donations and un-personalised ads alone, and it's definitely preferable (in my view, at least) to having a total paywall.
Unless you have an innovative alternative income source to propose, I'm not sure I see what alternative there is.
I'm a fan of 404media's model, which does have ads, but gets most of its funding through subscribers. All their news journalism is free (behind a login page), but they have premium content like behind the scenes blogs and an expanded podcast for subscribers only.
I get that the only reason they can do this is because
But it is an interesting model. I'd subscribe if I could afford it. And maybe someday I will.
I think 3) is a really interesting point, and probably the primary reason why a model like that may be less viable for e.g. the Guardian. I think having that parasocial relationship is key to having people take interest enough to be willing to pay for the extra content around the main news output. My concern is that a model like that might incentivise being intentionally divisive and/or making the main content be more like entertainment than information.
Only time will tell, I can see how that would be the risk. I've noticed how Sabine Hossenfelter started out with science news and followed her audience right-ward to anti-science crazy town. I have more hope for classically-trained journalists with ethics to follow and reputation to uphold, but you're right that pressure is real