>> "I want to support these sites but they are too expensive"
I've been thinking about this a bit recently. Back before these sites were free online we picked the publication we liked and purchased it. We didn't need to read every publication and someone who chose to read the NYT was informed on the same world events as someone who read the WSJ. Then the internet came along and we read bits of everything for free. Now we have to go back to the old model it feels strange - but it shouldn't. Whether you chose to subscribe to and read the NYT or WSJ doesn't matter. You'll get the same information each with it's own slant. Same as before. You aren't going to miss anything. The publications need to convince consumers that this is ok and they don't need to be checking 10 different publications each day. Whether they can do that or not is another thing (short attention spans appear to be a big and growing problem) but I've definitely tried to pare down the number of sites I read and subscribe to and I've tried to focus on the best sources rather than 10 almost identical stories with slight variations. I've found it freeing.
What we need is like a spotify for news. Anybody can put their news in and if a reader reads an article that news company gets part of the subscription fees.
I don't know if that would be better or worse though!
I like that idea. Although I have to say switching from lots of sources to a few good ones has increased my productivity (less time wasted reading similar articles). There are some things that I think people like NYT need to sort out with their subscriptions. Charging for web access separate from mobile access is a joke. Charge one fee ($20 per month) to read on any electronic device. I can't see how their current fragmented pricing model doesn't seriously hurt their conversion rate.
Well users could sort out by publisher so they can read news only from their local newspaper and/or the NYT or something else or if they'd rather read all tech news, a place like HN can be integrated somehow to allow for the dynamic community sorted news.
I think your argument fails to account for sites like Hacker News. Yeah, sure you'll get the more or less same information if only read one news site or the other, but if HN links to (say) the Economist, but you can't read it because you're only subscribed to the NYT, whilst others only have WSJ, then you're not reading and discussing the same article as everyone else.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently. Back before these sites were free online we picked the publication we liked and purchased it. We didn't need to read every publication and someone who chose to read the NYT was informed on the same world events as someone who read the WSJ. Then the internet came along and we read bits of everything for free. Now we have to go back to the old model it feels strange - but it shouldn't. Whether you chose to subscribe to and read the NYT or WSJ doesn't matter. You'll get the same information each with it's own slant. Same as before. You aren't going to miss anything. The publications need to convince consumers that this is ok and they don't need to be checking 10 different publications each day. Whether they can do that or not is another thing (short attention spans appear to be a big and growing problem) but I've definitely tried to pare down the number of sites I read and subscribe to and I've tried to focus on the best sources rather than 10 almost identical stories with slight variations. I've found it freeing.