> I will tell you this for sure - if they don't make money, they'll disappear.

Perfect, it would be about time. Most internet "journalism" is hyper-optimized to incite outrage and disagreement so people can "engage with the content". Facts and critical thinking be damned in the process. Countless articles have been linked on HN that prove this, including testimony from former media workers and bosses.

And... maybe natural selection is finally starting to work. Why stop it?

> So get out your wallet and pay for the new sites that you value

Those I value don't bug me for subscriptions and don't whitelist Google's crawler to create the illusion that their content is free. So I am good, thank you.

> and enough with the smarmy snark poking at companies that need to pay peoples salaries.

No. I will ridicule them while I draw breath. And maybe these people should find actual productive jobs, there are enough enthusiasts working for free and reporting stuff around the world already. I don't get paid to tell people at parties which tech I believe is exciting or that two cops in my neighborhood have beaten a 16-year old girl senseless for reasons unknown. I have a job and the rest is just me talking voluntarily in front of people because I felt like it. Maybe it should be exactly the same with these people you are talking about.

--- And finally, "the truth" in journalism does not exist for a long time now or it gets silenced with two shots in the head labelled as "suicide" (this is not an exaggerated joke, it's a documented case and you can easily look it up).

I do not think your arguments apply to The Economist.

>And maybe these people should find actual productive jobs, there are enough enthusiasts working for free and reporting stuff.

Whatever it is you do to make money, I would wager there is someone who is enthusiastic and doing it for free. Depending on the time dedication and skill set involved they may or may not be doing it as competently as you.

> I do not think your arguments apply to The Economist.

True, I was responding to a broader point.

> Whatever it is you do to make money, I would wager there is someone who is enthusiastic and doing it for free. Depending on the time dedication and skill set involved they may or may not be doing it as competently as you.

Also true, however as a programmer vs. journalist there are several VERY important differences:

- Many people tried doing programming for free. It's not sustainable. It's too much work, too much details, too much legacy from other teams, too much documentation work necessary, too big a burden to onboard new members, requires too much knowledge and know-how. I realize part of this applies to professional journalists, but it's definitely much easier for them compared to us. They don't need to learn X languages and X^2 frameworks before they go out the door interviewing people. And no, 4 years in university is NOTHING compared to what us the tech people do for education, almost every single day.

- Photographing a potential crime or a PR mishap with your smartphone, then sprinting for two blocks, and then uploading it to Twitter is only two orders of magnitude easier than programming, sorry. Your comparison does not hold up here at all.

- Programming, being an architect or a lawyer, and a bunch of such professions require a lot of skill and training. Most journalists I've known get by just fine by being insolent and knowing how to piss someone off enough so they spill the beans and give them a sensational story. Again, this is orders of magnitude easier (and requires much less time!) than refactoring a huge business system that is barely holding up and urgently needs reviving.

I was not saying that any enthusiastic amateur is as good as a professional investigative journalist, by the way. I was saying that AT LARGE the world provides enough accidental reporting so as to make most traditional journalistic reporting redundant. That was my main point.

I was also not saying all journalists are useless. Some are very influential and important. I did say "most".

As a final point, I have not ever found myself having to twist code or documentation so as not to piss my employer's benefactor -- and that happens a lot to the journalists. So IMO most are useless due to them being powerless and always at the mercy of the powers of the day.

What frustrates me is the mixed experience of sometimes being able to read, sometimes not. The Economist is a robust enough of a publication they can just throw the paywall up every time like WSJ, no X free articles per month. I actually prefer the consistency.

We're not against ads per se, we're against tracking and profiling. If sites need to run ads it's their right to do so. As long as a) they're not abusing user's privacy, b) they're not sending malware and if they do there have to be consequences, and as optional, c) they don't run 15 ads on a page hurting UI and readability. If they can follow these 2+1 rules they can have as much ads as they like. I might even whitelist them on uBlock Origin.

On the other hand, and that's just my personal opinion, I don't give two shits if most media disappear. Nine out of 10 times a journalist writes about an issue that I know well they're just writing BS, which makes me wonder what happens with issues I'm ignorant about-chances are they're also writing BS. Every time I need an expert view on a subject I visit HN or some similar community site, not a news site. I'm not saying that I'm on a crusade to punish journalists, I just don't see what's the fuss with the scenario of most news sites going off business.