I'm sure they have their reasons for doing it that way, but to me these kind of pricing structures are a huge turn-off. Just tell me what it costs and let me pay it, you know? If you want to capitalize on the moment when I'm reading an NYT story and think "you know, this is so good I really should be paying for it," putting math problems between me and the payment form is the wrong way to do it.

However, nytimes.com has a very regrettable pricing structure, as you say. They seem to aim to be Comcast-like. The pricing is:

* Heavily promotional (special price 50%+ off sticker price)

* Difficult to cancel (you are asked to call them, although they will ultimately run it through email)

* Opaque in billing (no way to actually look at the terms of your current subscription/promotion; full payment history hidden away to obscure how much you're paying them)

They do this no doubt because it works in the short term and bumps up numbers. But as a consumer I can't help but feel they are losing goodwill and face in this new age and hope they come around to more contemporary online billing practices.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media... is the best example I can find. It's very nice to get stuff like this every week. Kudos to the web team.

You're better off disagreeing with something well written than agreeing with crap.

Per evidence. Here's evidence: half the 'content' you read on the web was first reported by the nyt.

Recent examples: Hilary clinton emails, VW scandal, Nail salon exploitation, etc, etc...

here are 50 more:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/21/business/media...

(disclaimer: i work for the nyt but opinions are my own)

[0] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index....

An interesting question:

1) It's not something that can be measured. It's similar to asking, 'is there any evidence that FDR was a better President than Calvin Coolidge?'

2) Is there evidence of that others are better?

3) Based on my experience, I believe the NY Times output has been more accurate than almost any other source (maybe the Financial Times or something I'm not thinking of). That's not true for every story, but over the population of stories. Because I can't evaluate the accuracy of each story, I need to find a source I trust.

4) The NY Times breaks many important stories that are not in other publications, at least not until the Times breaks them.

5) FWIW, Paul Graham, at least at one time, thought highly of the NYT's integrity (search the page for "times"). http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

6) The NYT's reputation is excellent, relative to other news sources; many people trust it. Also, both the left and right say the Times is biased against them, which I think is a good sign.

All that said, certainly the Times isn't perfect and has much room to improve.

I'm an Economist subscriber so I do pay for news.

BBC News (bbc.co.uk/news) isn't really free to UK users but website vistors outside the UK don't pay (but they do get ads instead). Of course, the BBC's news coverage of the US is nowhere near as extensive as NYT. They don't cover the US arts/sports/food/tech scene etc. (It would be interesting to see the breakdown of subscribers to the NYT. Are they mainly US readers? Or are there international subscribers too?)

If you don't like the BBC, there's Al-Jazeera. I suspect many Americans distrust them, but I'm impressed by the scale of their international news coverage.

I'm guessing that most people check multiple news sources (even if you trust some sources less than others). Does anyone really rely on a single news provider nowadays?

I would like to hear this argument as well.

Do the thought experiment. Will there ever be a Sunday Vanilla Ice program forty years after Vanilla Ice was current? I really doubt it.

(Ask a question, you risk responses. :)