(11-06-2020, 06:50 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(11-06-2020, 06:32 PM)ac3r Wrote: The Record is garbage, I would never pay them. Local journalism is great, but The Record is awful. They barely do any worthwhile journalism, a lot of the paper is just crap that Metroland Media/Torstar pushes out to all their subsidiary papers or generic press releases they pretend are articles. The greedy paywall is a complete turn off as well, there are better ways to provide good journalism without both preventing potential readers from reading anything, but also begging them for money at the same time.
Whether you like the record or not, we MUST find a different business model for journalism...the current system is seriously broken, and I don't think paywalls, or guilt tripping, or anything like that is going to fix it.
I like the approach The Guardian uses. Their web conent content is all free (so, the vast majority of their news - yet they also publish physically, but they make sure the published versions contain some print exclusive material), so to generate revenue they just politely ask every so often if you'd like to either make a one time donation to help or buy a subscription. I'm not sure such an approach could work for The Record, given its size and readership (The Guardian is one the biggest papers in the UK and internationally), but I suppose that illustrates why high quality local journalism is a good thing - if you have that, you can draw in subscribers. Most objection I hear to The Record mirrors mine: it just isn't worth giving money to and their hard paywall can put you off considering it even if you want to check out what they have.