Shifting to a subscription-only revenue model is not an easy proposition, and requires a huge adjustment that most newspapers are not yet ready to make.

Source: I used to work for a major regional newspaper.

and as far as paying for ads, I find it absurd that anyone pays for cable tv anymore.

1) its my cheapest option to have local channels

2) of the DVR options (so I don't deal with those ads), it still has the best experience (tried Hulu, DirecTVNow, YouTubeTV) - YouTubeTV was the closest, but they inject ads you cannot skip in on demand programs and replace your "recordings" with on demand programs as soon as the network makes them available.

cheaper than an antenna? Do you live somewhere with too much interference?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/conde-nast-to-put-all-titles-be...

> “The New Yorker, which introduced a metered paywall in late 2014, generated about $115 million in paid-subscription revenue in 2018, up 69% from 2015, people familiar with the matter said. That revenue includes consumers who subscribed to the digital and print editions, although subscribers today no longer have the option of subscribing solely to the print magazine. The New Yorker’s regular renewal price for a print and digital bundle is moving to $149 a year from $119. The magazine will publish 47 issues this year.”

Granted, there’s a big difference between publishing 47 issues of long form writing a year, and 365 issues of a much longer daily-reported newspaper.

EDIT: not to mention that the Times and other big newspapers probably see themselves as informing the public discourse. It probably wouldn’t fly to put general newspapers behind a paywall, though the FT has greatly increased profitability with this strategy.

I want to point out that advertising doesn't have to be intrusive. While this isn't appropriate for an independent journalistic institution like the NYT, the vast majority of for-profit publishers actually can continue with an ad-driven model without degrading their site's experience. One solution is to accept paid contributions to articles by advertisers with actual expertise in the subject matter. For e.g. marketing or tech periodicals, this works quite well.

Advertorials are an even worse solution than ads.

Obviously this needs to be properly disclosed, but the result is very different from an advertorial, i.e.: _actual_ expert commentary on a well-researched piece.

No. If an advertiser is paying to publish it, it's an advertorial, full stop. Why would they pay to produce and publish an actual quality article that doesn't push an agenda in some non-journalistic way? It's literally the job of advertisers to push an agenda.

And then when I couldn't take it anymore and went to cancel, their retention department had the gall to suggest the message was not from them and maybe was from my browser.

Fuck you, New York Times. Paying subscribers should not see ads or be hassled to be tracked by the ad industrial complex. Raise your prices if you have to.

In general though, I agree that paying customers should not be subjected to ads. But as someone who worked in the news industry (quite some time ago now) I don't think newspapers have learned that lesson yet or can afford to do that.

If I wanted to cancel, I'm not going to be able to call though, as I live in Australia. I thought there were laws in some states of the U.S. that meant you have to be able to unsubscribe through a form though?

It's bad enough calling to complain/cancel a local company - I've paid several pounds a time; I certainly avoid it if at all possible, and would more so with an overseas company.

If I was going to have to go through that to cancel my subscription to a British newspaper, I'd just cancel the DD - a few taps in my bank's app.