The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

http://digiday.com/publishers/wall-street-journal-close-google-loophole-entirely/

by sornars • 9 years ago

263 312 9 years ago

digiday.com

bpchaps• 9 years ago

So... is this good reason to stop posting WSJ on HN yet?

dang• 9 years ago

It might be, if it happens.

CaliforniaKarl• 9 years ago

Hmmmm. In the FAQ, under the question "Are paywalls ok?", there's this:

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

If this loophole is closed, will there be any workarounds? If that's the case, then I wonder if it'll still be OK to post WSJ links to HN.

aardvarks• 9 years ago

As of earlier today you could still follow links from WSJ social media, for example their official twitter feeds, and get access to the whole article. Any way to set that up as a link in HN?

alfalfasprout• 9 years ago

For what it's worth, whenever you share an article from the WSJ as a subscriber it seems to generate a custom link that bypasses the paywall for the recipient. I hope they retain this feature because I do enjoy sharing articles with people that might not subscribe.

pascalxus3• 9 years ago

First of all, I think it's great that journalists can get compensated for their work.

but, strictly speaking as a consumer, I must say their paywall is completely out of touch with the way I want to pay for news consumption. I don't mind paying 5c or even 10c per article, but I'm certainly not going to sign up to pay 120$ for 6 months, if I'm only going to read 1 or 2 articles here and there. but since they've done it this way, I can only conclude that most consumers prefer it that way.

jay_kyburz4• 9 years ago

I would consider perhaps $5-$10 a month if the WSJ was going to be my only source of news. If I could trust it to provide me with all I need every morning while I eat my breakfast.

Unfortunately I live in Australia so most stuff in WSJ I don't care about. (And we have the ABC)

harryjo2• 9 years ago

Why is a full feed of quality news worth less to you than Netflix?

executive• 9 years ago

Not sure if this is a good deal, but take a look: https://myaccount.news.com.au/theaustralian/subscribe?pkgDef...

x0x02• 9 years ago

The Washington Post, one of the three best papers in America (NYT, WSJ, Post), is $50/year if you're a prime subscriber.

EduardoBautista• 9 years ago

https://blendle.com/ seems to meet your needs.

mark_l_watson• 9 years ago

Thanks for the link! I just signed up requesting a beta invite. $0.25 per article, with an instant refund sounds fair. I have wanted access to The Economist, etc., but not enough for a full subscription.

bonniemuffin• 9 years ago

This is exactly how I want to support journalism & consume news. I don't want to commit to a single source of news, but I'm happy to pay per use.

reeddavid• 9 years ago

I really enjoyed Blendle for a while, but I found that I frequently ended up paying for articles on the Blendle platform that I could have accessed for free from the publisher.

teej4• 9 years ago

The amount you want to pay for news is not anywhere close to the value it is providing you or that they make from ad revenue.

anigbrowl2• 9 years ago

That's not the problem. I might be willing pay a lot for news. What I don't want is 100 different newspaper subscriptions. And to say that you should just pick a favorite newspaper and get everything from there is like demanding you decide what books you want before visiting a library.

wfunction2• 9 years ago

The amount you want to pay for news is not anywhere close to the value it is providing you or that they make from ad revenue.

What amount would be close to the value they make from ad revenue?

sbierwagen• 9 years ago

Let's say you're standing in a field strewn with gold bars. A man comes up to you and offers to sell you a gold bar for $400,000. You point out that you are standing among hundreds of gold bars, all of them free for the taking. He points out that it was a lot of hard work extracting gold from thousands of tons of ore, casting it, assaying it, etc.

Just because something cost a lot to make, doesn't mean it's worth a lot. Sorry.

pascalxus3• 9 years ago

Perhaps that's true for the top 10% most engaged WSJ users.

But, how do you know how much value I'm getting from that news source? I usually get my news from many different sources. And sometimes, I don't even read the entire article. Only a small percentage of the articles are actually of interest to me.

wtf_is_up2• 9 years ago

If you're a student, WSJ has a plan for $50/yr.

brokenmasonjars• 9 years ago

Always worth checking the school library database first as it might be available for free (well, 'free'... not including tuition..)

perlpimp3• 9 years ago

I totally agree with you, it would also make me read the article worth the money spent. As a company they must pay salaries of established staff, that sort of stands at odds with per article revenue. Its like this, if business hires people for at least 6months they ought to make an effort to get those people paid and projecting income from penny articles can be substantially difficult.

fovc2• 9 years ago

I posted this somewhere else on this thread, but I've seen a lot of the "I just want to pay 25c per article" comments. Try https://blendle.com

sgt1012• 9 years ago

I'd be happy to buy an issue at a time - I think $.5 would be a fair price given that there is no printing cost and that the advertising is more valuable as it's micro targeted to me. I'd buy an issue to read a particular article or because I want one to read for general amusement.

Subscription feels like monogamy, I've got lots of different things to spend cash on, I don't want to commit at this scale to spending it on things I may not want.

maverick_iceman• 9 years ago

They need to go iTunes way and unbundle payments for individual articles. The past has shown that people will pay for quality contents. Also they need to make the payment UI super efficient. If I have to take out my credit card every time then forget it.

oskarth• 9 years ago

While I agree, it is probably a case of not being in their target market:

- Average age: 40+

- Average household income: 250k+

- Average household net worth: 1.5m+

From http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/2016_WSJcom_....

buzzkills• 9 years ago

link doesn't work

mattraibert2• 9 years ago

Here is a working link that contains all the the info parent cites:

http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/WSJ.com%20Au...

Also, this is the _actual_ audience not their _target_ audience.

idiot_stick• 9 years ago

So 15 minutes of entertainment time to you (the time spent consuming a WSJ article) is worth 5 or 10 cents? Imagine if you were compensated at the same rate for your work.

I suggest you try to find a substitute for those entertainment pennies. If you can, and that item is "free", good for you. But I doubt 5 or 10 cents gets you much.

lorenzhs• 9 years ago

A Netflix subscription is around 30 cents per day.

Not to mention that 15 minutes is a very generous estimate, the median is probably closer to 3-5 minutes. Given that the article isn't written for me, that sounds rather fair for accessing it. A print subscription to the WSJ is $400/yr or $1.30/issue, and if I spend an hour reading it that comes out to 6 to 11 cents for a 3-to-5-minute article.

imgabe• 9 years ago

If my work could be simultaneously consumed by millions of people and they all wanted to pay 5 or 10 cents, I'd be totally ok with that.

nkozyra• 9 years ago

That's probably more expensive per article then the print product, which included costs of physical production.

Journalism has always been about advertisers and scale. The problem now is lowered barriers to entry drove up supply, reducing advertising $ available to "real journalism" and entities like nyt and wsj still have vestigial anchors pulling them down further.

Couple that with growing adblocking and it's a bad recipe. How do you put that genie back in the bottle? The net effect has been lowered standards by former standouts in a race to the bottom. I don't see a fix, much less an easy one.

pascalxus3• 9 years ago

I speed read. Usually I'm done in less than 30-60 seconds. There's so much filler stuff in there, often.

jay_kyburz4• 9 years ago

I think this is great news. I'd love to see WSJ ad free and funded with subscriptions.

I'm not sure I would subscribe, but I want to live in a world where it's possible.

freehunter2• 9 years ago

I would love to see the NYT completely ad-free. I subscribed for a few months thinking my subscription fee would remove the ads, but that wasn't the case.

I want a good source of news, ad-free, and I'm willing to pay for it. Unfortunately it seems like I'm in the extreme minority.

grzm3• 9 years ago

I'd like that, too. However, subscriptions alone—unless raised significantly—won't cover the costs for the NYT (or other paper). Note that the physical paper always carries ads and each paper is paid for—either the cover price or through a subscription.

Hopefully subscriptions will encourage better quality ads, headlines, and stories. Subscriptions do allow for less click bait.

rootusrootus• 9 years ago

I hope you're not in an extreme minority, because I'm right there with you. I currently subscribe to the NYT, and I'd welcome the opportunity to entirely pay for my content without having to worry about ads. I get around it now by using ABP -- with no guilt, since I'm a subscriber -- but it would be nice to not need such interventions.

prklmn• 9 years ago

They're totally set on the advertising business model. They started displaying ads on the front page of the paper in 2009. If they change anything, they will raise prices and display even more ads.

the_duke• 9 years ago

Sadly for most newspapers, WSJ is in a special position. It has the highest circulation of any paper in the US, and it has a target audience that really doesn't mind paying.

A paywall wouldn't work out well for many others.

tonyedgecombe• 9 years ago

I suspect most of the others would be better just posting teaser material on the web and trying to make the rest up in the paper edition.

briandear5• 9 years ago

The Houston Chronicle has a similar dual system. The print newspaper is online but paywalled: houstonchronicle.com the "chron.com" version is mostly buzzfeedish fluff that's free.

rspeer• 9 years ago

So does this mean Google is going to stop indexing the text of WSJ articles?

gleenn• 9 years ago

There is still incentive for WSJ to allow Google to index, they probably just will redirect you to sign up when you click through. Perhaps they'd let Google just index the preview text to prevent using the cache

freehunter2• 9 years ago

Doesn't Google punish sites that show different content to Googlebot than they do to a user?

robryan• 9 years ago

Google should absolutely not index, at least not under the current organic and news search. Why should they send traffic to articles that people can't freely view?

I would support some kind of premium news offering from Google where they do index these and you are allowed access through a revenue share subscription made via Google.

chii• 9 years ago

Why should they send traffic to articles that people can't freely view?

what if WSJ paid google to index, but not give out for free? Or, rather, partnered with google so that you can pay for WSJ (or individual articles) via google's payment infrastructure?

kevincox• 9 years ago

I wouldn't be against Google showing the articles clearly marked as non-free. I would however be disappointed if I clicked through a regular link and hit a paywall.

ikeboy3• 9 years ago

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en...

According to this, it will need to mark WSJ links differently in Google News.

Interestingly, I tested it and links from Google news still had a "First Click Free", contrary to OP. To test:

1. Go to https://news.google.com/ from a computer that hasn't visited any WSJ articles that day

2. Click on a WSJ link (mine was https://www.wsj.com/articles/daniel-tarullo-federal-reserve-...)

3. See if the whole article is displayed. For me, it was, but when I tried again it only showed a snippet. So it seems like they're only showing the very first click, which does not comply with Google's guidelines above (which require 3 articles a day to be viewable). Anyone else want to offer data points?

Edit: oh, OP says it's only starting Monday.

(Of course, WSJ may be exempt because of direct communication with Google, which I'd expect anyway at their size and at the fact that they weren't banned when they started testing this. But Google should really note any exceptions in their policy.)

ikeboy3• 9 years ago

Update: WSJ articles that are paywalled are now marked as subscription in google news.

Animats2• 9 years ago

Paywalls have been tightening up recently. The Washington Post now has stronger anti-ad-blocking. So do the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times is still accessible.

It's a concern that the newspapers which have actual reporters in the field are disappearing behind paywalls.

grzm3• 9 years ago

Actual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes. Sure, people might share a few papers at the office or at a restaurant, but having access like we've had for the past 20 years or so is pretty remarkable. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely ad-based publishing is encouraging an increase in yellow journalism.

jrs235• 9 years ago

I was under the impression that the subscription fee for newspapers was to cover printing and delivery. And that the ads were how the publishers got paid.

Animats2• 9 years ago

The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access.

Not really. Radio. TV.

StRoy2• 9 years ago

Actual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes.

True for physical media, aka paper news, but not so much for radio and tv. The internet didn't invent anything new here in giving free access to news, it just provides a written form in addition to video and audio forms.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely ad-based publishing is encouraging an increase in yellow journalism.

That is true but that form of mediocre journalism can coexist with alternatives. In France we still have paper news that does not depend on ads at all, and that have healthy revenue, like Le Canard Enchaine. Just because mediocre journalism can be accessed for free on the internet does not mean paper news has to die. Le Canard is one of the most profitable newspaper in France, despite requiring a subscription and having zero ads (None, at all, ever. A great tradition they've always maintained). They also have heavy restrictions on their employees for the sake of objective journalism : they cannot play with the stock market nor can they accept gifts or official honors. Just the fact that they don't have any ads at all in their newspaper sets quite a different standard from things like the NYT or WSJ. Those two keep begging for subscribers, but even if you buy their actual paper news, you still have to suffer their ads and wonder how much ad revenue can influence them. Maybe it would be more acceptable and they would gain more subscribers if they became subscriber only in exchange for removing all ads and not depending on ad revenue anymore? As a French Le Canard has proven to me and the rest of us that a newspaper can live without ads at all so I feel a lot less willing to pay for forms of news that compromise with advertisers and pollute our minds.

There is also in France, and accessible through the internet, the availability of state owned media, which is free for the poor segment of the population, and lives through a mandatory tax on the rest. It isn't quite as good as Le Canard, but still a lot higher quality than the average privately owned news. They have written form of news on websites like francetvinfo, radio, tv channels and so on. I'm particularly fond of the tv magazine Envoye Special and its in depth coverage of specific, selected topics during its airings.

xg15• 9 years ago

The idea of free access to news is relatively recent

Recent or not, it's an extremely important idea.

That said I agree with others that the real problem might be that no one so far is willing/able to replicate the kiosk model on the web.

Imagine if the only (legal) option to consume a physical newspaper were via subscription. Sounds absurd? It's just as absurd on the web.

colordrops• 9 years ago

I'm curious as to how much their viewership has dropped. I haven't read an LA times article since they banned ad blockers. Not that they care much about viewers that only cost them money.

Sgt_Apone• 9 years ago

NY Times digital subscriptions have soared over the past few months and right now they apparently have 1.6 million digital subscribers.[1] Though, revenue is still down as their print advertising income continues to contract.

1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/business/media/new-york-t...

ctrl_freak2• 9 years ago

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work.

E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

ikeboy3• 9 years ago

I would give you HN gold if it existed (now we just need a bookmarklet/extension to automate this).

Do we know that this will still work on Monday? Maybe this will also be closed and you'll need a special link?

wfunction2• 9 years ago

Bookmarklet for Facebook:

  javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

Bookmarklet for Google:

  javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&url="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

oconnore• 9 years ago

Instead of buying internet points for someone who figured out a little hack to access journalism, maybe you could instead pay for journalism?

7yagi• 9 years ago

It's working right now

azag03• 9 years ago

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

rhaps0dy• 9 years ago

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music?

Perhaps it is? I've almost never had anyone remark that I was doing something bad when not paying for a software or movie or music.

abtinf2• 9 years ago

the Journal also started letting people read for free links that are shared on social media by subscribers and staffers.

Because the publisher explicitly allows it.

monochromatic2• 9 years ago

Everything on the web used to be free. We got used to that.

tomjen32• 9 years ago

It is, music, software and movies are pirated illegally too.

mirimir5• 9 years ago

I'd be happy to pay, under these conditions: 1) payment per article, at prices comparable to aggregate ad income; and 2) payments accepted via Bitcoin, or other methods which can be anonymized.

beejiu• 9 years ago

You can often loan out movies, music, books and sometimes software from a local library, free of charge. (At least in the UK.) It was also common to loan a friend a CD back when CDs were a thing. Perhaps it is more pervasive now, but I don't think it is fair to say that everybody who consumes media pays for it.

jdavis703• 9 years ago

This is the equivalent of reading a magazine in the bookstore and not buying it. It would be different if you walked out the store without paying.

zeamaize• 9 years ago

Why the hell should I pay for poor journalism that is riddled with ads?

There is a reason I subscribe to Netflix but not Hulu.

tedmiston• 9 years ago

Because there is no Spotify or Netflix for written content.

kuschku• 9 years ago

Are you willing to pay each month

    SPIEGEL:  $  9.40
    FAZ:      $ 44.90
    WSJ:      $ 30.85
    Guardian: $  6.99
    KN:       $ 19.99
    
    -----------------
    Total     $112.13

just to read a handful of articles per newspaper?

I’m sorry, I’m a student, I don’t even have Netflix because that’s too expensive.

maxerickson• 9 years ago

Which culture are you talking about? Lots (lots!) of people view and collect media without paying for it.

ctrl_freak2• 9 years ago

The reason I posted the workaround is because I feel like the publisher is trying to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, they enjoy the publicity they get from having their articles shared on Google, Facebook, Hacker News, but these sites usually don't want to feature articles that require their users to pay, so WSJ sets up a soft paywall that lets some of these users view the article for free.

But of course that becomes a bit of a blurry moral line. If I start browsing Google News in the hopes of stumbling upon a WSJ article so I can read it for free, is that immoral? What about if I google the headline of an article I'm interested in? Automatically setting my referer to facebook.com whenever I visit wsj.com probably goes too far, but then where do you draw the line?

Anyway, I feel very strongly that either everyone from HN should be able to freely read an article shared here, or no one. If no one can read it, then the link shouldn't be allowed here.

k_lander• 9 years ago

i would be perfectly fine with this. just give me a way to exclude wsj from my newsfeed and search results without me having to install a trusted browser extension

sneak• 9 years ago

If they don't want people to read for free, the WSJ should simply not serve it.

We're free to send them any Referer headers we wish... in a request. It's up to them to reply however they wish.

Retr0spectrum• 9 years ago

The only downside with this is that facebook gets a small amount of data about your browsing habbits.

wslh• 9 years ago

You can create a fake account.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

It's the same data that Google was getting.

Also, I think Facebook (and Twitter, and others) already have a Share button on all WSJ articles that would inform them when you visit that page.

davedx• 9 years ago

Ah, the WSJ, hotbed of climate change denial. I don't click through to any of their articles anyway. I wish them well with their stupid paywall

bilkow• 9 years ago

Does it work by checking the referrer? Maybe you can workaround by configuring a browser add-on (like RefControl) to just send facebook.com as a referrer while on WSJ.

Jgrubb• 9 years ago

I believe this was discussed in one of the last threads as being potentially against some dumbass 25 year old law.

frakr• 9 years ago

It's easier to not read Rupert Murdoch owned content.

jcoffland• 9 years ago

I prefer Reuters. They seem to have less bias, their articles are free and many stories at other news outlets are bought from Reuters anyway.

seanp2k22• 9 years ago

There's also AP.org http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/RAW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME

Many news agencies are just editorializing AP news anyway.

aw3c22• 9 years ago

When I realised that, I stopped considering the majority of "news regurgitation" worth my money.

raldi5• 9 years ago

Has any publisher tried out a paywall along the lines of the following?

"Hey, you've spent 29 hours so far this year reading 119 articles. Suggested donation: $62"

pzh• 9 years ago

The Guardian is doing something similar but without tracking the hours spent. They just say "Hey, we see you spend a lot of time around here. Why don't you help us out a bit so we can stay afloat?"

raldi5• 9 years ago

I feel like that's missing the sine qua non of the idea. You gotta remind people that, like, "You're read the equivalent of five novels here this year!"

colanderman• 9 years ago

The Guardian's tactic actually got me to pay for news for the first time in my life. For some reason I'm really turned off to the idea of buying a ~$100 subscription to a single paper, but I'll gladly toss $25 here or there in response to good journalism.

perlpimp3• 9 years ago

I am just wondering what would be equivalent to scanning some articles not reading them, conflating two destroys potential value to offer this proposition. I don't often read articles but I want to see if its worth reading. So it is a bit of a hardsell on part of wsj, but they do cater to more of the affluent public so my guess they stand to gain more from playing hardball with people who do have more disposable income than rest of the internet public.

idclip• 9 years ago

Do you realise the kind of tracking that entails?

raldi5• 9 years ago

Most paywall newspapers already keep track of how many articles you've read this month, and count it down for you; this would just add a timer, too. Which their analytics code is surely already reporting.

aw3c22• 9 years ago

"Hey, we kept track of all the things you read here. This month you spent 13 hours looking at clickbait-boobies, 2 on politics and 27 on coverage of divorce cases. Wouldn't it suck if someone else used your machine right now or if we gave this information to tens of third-parties (we already did)?"

I would support that. Might make people more aware of how pervasive tracking is.

raldi5• 9 years ago

It's like I started a conversation about haircuts and you're bringing up dismemberment.

glenneroo2• 9 years ago

I often open 10-30 tabs with stories I want to read later.. and I leave those tabs sometimes open for a few hours or up to a few days until I have time/interest to read them. How would a paywall deal with that? Or perhaps I am the exception with this type of reading.

detaro• 9 years ago

Only count times where your tab is visible, and/or the user occasionally scrolls? I'd expect that's a fairly standard feature in tracking JS.

raldi5• 9 years ago

Analytics code solved that problem long ago.

gesman• 9 years ago

With every single news outlet taking polical position lately - it became intolerable to read or find somewhat objective news source.

I don't mind paying <$10 / mo for clean no BS objective and detailed coverage.

arjie3• 9 years ago

That makes sense. But your pricing is unreasonable. I don't mind paying $10k for a Ferrari.

hnbroseph6• 9 years ago

ferraris are toys where each copy bears an unavoidable cost of production.

news articles have a single upfront cost, but subsequent copies carry near-zero production cost.

mcintyre1994• 9 years ago

Is WSJ not a political news source? They're owned by News Corp and at least in the UK that conglomerate is responsible for the most politicised and polarising media.

hnbroseph6• 9 years ago

yes, wsj is politicized.

perlpimp3• 9 years ago

I am just wondering if sites can have affiliated material subscriptions like with hn have free clickthrough for 2$ a month or 5$ a month to all sites from where the articles originate from.

gnu8• 9 years ago

Fuck the Journal then. Above everything else, I will never reward their bad behavior by paying them money.

lunchladydoris• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity I searched for the Wall Street Journal subscription page. I selected my country (UK) and then clicked on the subscription offer. I was then taken to a Hong Kong page with no obvious way of changing it back to the UK.

If they want subscribers, they're going to have to do a better job than that.

sumedh3• 9 years ago

I agree their pricing page is confusing. I just got information about a discount offer but its not clear how much is the full price after the discount.

manarth2• 9 years ago

It took me a couple times to find it. Go to https://buy.wsj.com/wsjuspresday17 and click the "Act now" link.

$32.99 (plus tax) a month, for digital access.

justin_vanw• 9 years ago

They are 'striving' to hit 3M subscribers? Sounds like they are trying very hard to go right out of business anyway.

soVeryTired• 9 years ago

Another way to get around many paywalls is to change your browser's user agent string to 'Googlebot'. I've got a subscription to the Financial Times, but if there's a one-off article somewhere else that I want to read, that's my go-to method for getting through a paywall. I wonder if their fix will close it off too.

skissane2• 9 years ago

Google recommends using reverse DNS lookup to determine if a client claiming to be Googlebot is really from Google – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en

It isn't hard for paywall website operators to use this to block Googlebot fakers. (Rather than doing a reverse DNS lookup on every request, you'd want to maintain a local cache of those results, so you only need to do DNS lookups on new client IPs.)

I believe Cloudflare already does this, and possibly some other CDNs too.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

DNS lookups are expensive at server scale. Bot traffic ranges from maybe a quarter to 80% of traffic, though googlebot was only a subset of that.

Cheaper to look for Google ASNs.

BuffaloBagel• 9 years ago

My pain at the loss of the Google loophole is tempered by the realization that the WSJ has largely become a propaganda organ of the GOP.

briandear5• 9 years ago

Luckily every other major newspaper has you covered then.

hnbroseph6• 9 years ago

most of them smeared sanders and fawned over clinton, so that's not a guarantee.

qwrusz• 9 years ago

I see in the comments there are still some workarounds to this paywall. Good to know. Cheers.

Just a reminder another workaround to the paywall is to you know actually subscribe to the newspaper. That is an option they offer. Obviously not possible for everyone. But if you have the money and want to read and support journalism... WSJ is really far from perfect but it's not the worst newspaper one could be subscribed to.

Also I think their discounted corporate plans program is huge, so depending where you work you may get a discount or it could be free, never hurts to ask.

Also, maybe YC could negotiate some sort of group WSJ discount for Hacker News users above a certain karma count? Just an idea...

nraynaud3• 9 years ago

I don't think it's smart to pay to read stuff from a group that also gets money from advertisers. You're either the product or the customer, when in doubt you'll be the product.

Real subscription journalism doesn't do advertising.

offa2• 9 years ago

What 'real subscription journalism' big-name newspapers that don't do advertising can you name? I am honestly struggling to think of any.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Advertising-free journalism has a far higher price. Always has. Independence isn't cheap.

https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/1...

downandout• 9 years ago

The larger problem here is that unless they plan to have their Google search results all say "click here to pay" or similar, this entire scheme violates Google's cloaking policy and should result in their being deindexed. This has traditionally been the entire reason that sites offered this workaround - it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts.

Here's hoping Google actually enforces their policy.

sokoloff• 9 years ago

If history is any guide, they absolutely will.

Google doesn't want people having a bad experience on Google which would drive them to consider any other source for search. If a search turns up an article and preview and a click-through doesn't show the same content, Google users will be annoyed, which will drive Google to act.

Google's anti-cloaking policy, while presented as a benefit for users [which it is], is strongly in Google's best interest to enforce as well.

tomjen32• 9 years ago

What I don't get is that they could just leave the first two paragraphs and let every see that, then require you to subscribe for more - google would accept that and they would still show up in search, right?

tyingq• 9 years ago

They could, but then only those two paragraphs would be indexed. That would make the content less rich, less relevant, so it wouldn't rank as high.

That's for the normal organic search results. I don't know the policy for showing up in Google news and the carousel. I suspect it wouldn't be allowed.

Edit: You can be subscription-only and be in Google news, but you have to show the same limited snippet to both Google and end users. And you get 'tagged' in the UI as subscription only. https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en

glenneroo2• 9 years ago

That's what Experts Exchange was doing. Back in the days before Stack Overflow, EE was one of the hot places to go for answers to software engineering problems. It was a free site for many years, then one day they decided to require a subscription to read the answers. Google still indexed the question, so that you would open up a EE link, only to be greeted with "the answer requires a subscription". Google allowed that for a number of years before finally deindexing their results, but it took bloody forever!

arjie3• 9 years ago

The WSJ is a fantastic source of information. I no longer subscribe since I no longer live in the US but I easily made more money from the information in the paper than I paid in.

It was also very informative.

If you can't derive value from it, I understand all the trouble people go through to bypass it. It's just that I see that people's stated aims and revealed preferences are in contradiction. Everyone wants high quality news. No one seems to want to pay what it costs.

iamgopal• 9 years ago

I would pay if I don't fear them. They constantly trying to push a propogenda, and you have to pay for it is indigestible

wcummings• 9 years ago

The Journal is a rarity in publishing in that it gets more money from readers than advertising

This is probably a good indicator of quality.

mattraibert2• 9 years ago

It's true that it indicates quality, but I suspect it also indicates the exceptional wealth of WSJ's readership.

sverige• 9 years ago

The problem is that newspapers believe the myth that they were really efficient at reporting on and delivering news, when really their core competency was their ability to deliver print advertising to every doorstep in a given market on a daily basis. This is similar to the music industry, whose core competency was not developing talent or setting the standards of taste, but rather delivering precisely molded disks of vinyl to far-flung stores every Tuesday.

Oh internet, what myths do you believe about yourself? That you are the harbinger of universal enlightenment and democracy?

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Archive.is is another frequently viable workaround.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription.

Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizations like WaPo do anyways.

Realizing in retrospect how trifling the amount of money we're talking about for a subscription is (it's a tiny fraction of my monthly information services bill [cable/Internet, Netflix, &c]), I feel kind of embarrassed for not having done this a long time ago.

I like WaPo but you might prefer something else, like NYT or WSJ. I'm sure all the major papers are solid choices. Most of you are younger than me. Don't be like me! Subscribe to a damn newspaper already.

carbocation2• 9 years ago

To lower the barrier even further, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber and subscribe via Amazon, the first 6 months are free and then the cost is $4/month thereafter.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

What's funny/terrible about this is that I am in fact a Prime subscriber, and didn't know this. I'm tempted to revise my subscription stuff and add the NYT. :)

stablemap2• 9 years ago

Maybe this doesn't count as supporting, but: you also get free access with a .edu, .gov, or .mil email address.

mudil• 9 years ago

I am trying to find it on Amazon, and failing. Can you please provide a link?

whatever_dude• 9 years ago

How do you get this deal? I'm having trouble finding it online.

freddyc4• 9 years ago

It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access said paid content online).

I've been a long-term WSJ subscriber and recently switched to the digital-only subscription due to the quality of their tablet app, but it remains a guilty pleasure of mine to buy up a selection of hard copy newspapers on a rainy weekend and lock myself away for hours.

douche• 9 years ago

but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future

I hope that high quality news organizations do have a future, but the WaPo? I'm not sure that label fits.

geodel• 9 years ago

Once flying from Dubai to DC I got a free copy of Sunday Financial times. It had huge number of topics. I would have never gotten all this stuff in one place sitting in front of Internet.

cheshire137• 9 years ago

They have this deal where Amazon Prime subscribers get several months free. That's why I'm a subscriber to WaPo now.

CSMastermind• 9 years ago

The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

I'd have a tough time deciding between the NYT and WSJ next, especially since the editorial/opinion section of the WaPo is the least valuable to me (informed opinion is something you can get everywhere on the Internet for free).

(WaPo vs. NYT was basically a coinflip decision for me, but doing WaPo and then NYT would probably create a pretty significant overlap, and WSJ wouldn't. On the other hand, the NYT is a substantially better site than WSJ).

appleiigs• 9 years ago

It's good for American news. For a wider angle and a good website and app, Financial Times is great.

dmix• 9 years ago

I've found WSJ to be a very good paper, especially for geopolitics and finance.

NYT and WaPo's political slant is almost becoming unreadable for someone who's moderate and disinterested in either US party. I can't speak for WaPo but I've been reading NYT for a decade now and their total abandonment of any attempt at political neutrality was disheartening this past year.

My only problem with WSJ is it's very expensive compared to NYT. About 3-4x as expensive as a Canadian. So I've been using WaPo recently, they're slightly better than NYT but only slightly. Probably going to go full WSJ soon.

rsync2• 9 years ago

"The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of."

I prefer the NYT and think the reporting is better and broader - especially with regard to the fluffier sections like Sunday Styles, the Magazine, the Book Review and so on ... if I had to pick a single news source I think the A section of NYT would be my choice.

However, I have to say that I enjoy reading the Financial Times more because of their practice of condensing a story into a single page without a fold and without a jump to another page. They explore the story in more depth deeper in the paper, but you can read the front page headline column from start to finish without unfolding and page turning.

Also, the NYT has this habit of vastly over-backgrounding quotes ... a ten word quote will have 2-3 inches of comma-delimited background and qualifications and it just breaks the story and is hard to read.

hedora• 9 years ago

They dropped in quality sharply when Murdoch acquired them, and fired a big chunk of the team. Then they started focusing on offensive conservative propaganda on their editorial page. At that point I stopped reading or paying attention to them.

Frankly, I welcome the news about the paywall since it will mean I see fewer links to their "journalism".

Has something changed in the last few years? Did they somehow turn things around?

[edit: Just wanted to point out that the events I'm referring to were about a decade ago. Concretely, before the acquisition, it seemed like the WSJ was driving something like 50% of the daily news cycle with a difficult to discern bias.

Upper management intentionally destroyed that, at least from an outsider perspective.

Reading the other comments and stories about the whole fake news phenomenon makes me think no one has managed to replicate the function they used to serve.]

friedman23• 9 years ago

The economist is the only other news source that I know of that is on par.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

Yeah, if you're willing to read a single source, it's not expensive.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

This is exactly why I hadn't subscribed in the past: I figured it was pointless, because what I really needed was the gestalt from all the papers.

Boy was that dumb of me. I'm sure I would benefit from having perspectives from the WSJ and NYT to pair with WaPo. But my previous state was having no newspaper at all to rely on, just free sites like (bleh) Slate and (unbelievably bad) cable news web sites like CNN. Adding a single newspaper to that has helped enormously.

And it's not just, or even mostly, about improving my understanding of world affairs. It's that the process I use to bring myself up to speed every day is so much more pleasant than it was before. It's like a version of the blogaverse where everything is reported by professionals. It feels kind of like a miracle.

Like I said: it was worth the money. So much so that I'm kicking myself for not having spent the money before. I would guess I get approximately as much value from the WaPo subscription as I do from Amazon Prime.

cylinder• 9 years ago

I always grab a print copy when they're available somewhere free but they're really unpleasant to navigate. Especially when you get into the inner pages and have to unfold the whole paper. Unless you're sprawled out on the floor or have a giant table, it's practically impossible.

Interestingly, a real impenetrable paywall makes me respect the print edition more. FT is a good example. I also like their format, layout and paper quality. But they are a financial paper so the economics are better.

tptacek8• 9 years ago

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I just subscribe to the digital edition.

joezydeco• 9 years ago

Friendly tip: if you have Amazon Prime, you can subscribe to WaPo for six months free, then 50% off after that.

rsync2• 9 years ago

"Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites"

I agree with this.

I would like to suggest that you extend this discovery from "daily" iterations with, as you suggest, WaPo/NYT/FT to "weekly" iterations with the London Review of Books[1]. Or the New Yorker. Both are very, very good.

Personally, I prefer reading LRB physically (with scotch) and the Kindle delivery of the New Yorker which I read with meals eaten out.

[1] LRB is about 1/3 editorial/commentary/journal and about 2/3 actual book reviews. The editorial/commentary is a very different flavor from any other media source I know of an is very interesting and refreshing. It's also quite progressive and left leaning which is interesting to me because I am not (so much).

arca_vorago• 9 years ago

"I'm sure all the major papers are solid choices. "

The problem is that they aren't. Without even getting into operation mockingbird style infiltration of the orgs, the state of journalism as a whole is abysmal, even on the previously well respected journals, and I get this from journalists themselves, at least the ones with integrity.

Honestly right now my method is to simply find the best journalists and writers, and then follow their work regardless of outlet or publisher, and then I smatter in main-stream-media so I understand what the Fox/CNN viewers and WSJ/HuffPo readers, and NPR/BBC listeners are thinking.

In the end though, the problem is all of them are so tied to the money they get from advertising and very subtle but real and powerful editorial influence from the owners/investors/advertisers, that even the ones people have learned to think they trust, like NPR for example, are shining examples of propaganda disguised as anything but, equivalents of Fox news. The oligarchy has infiltrated our mediums of communication because they are a threat.

The internet is the latest version of that threat, which is why we will continue to see attacks on the freedom of speech of the internet as well.

Major shoutouts to the outliers in this equation though who are briding the gap between traditional broadcasting and the itnernet, such as CSPAN, PBS, Charlie Rose, and the universities doing programs such as Conversations with History (UCTV) and Hoover Institute, et al.

PS: WaPo has gone way downhill in their journalistic integrity lately, I expect they are a major mockingbird pivot point. The best traditional source of news I have found? London Financial Times.

dataduck• 9 years ago

Ironically, I've mostly abandoned big-name news sites to listen more to people like tptacek. What I see in the papers is mostly people pushing a story, usually with seemingly little technical expertise, and without the important context, or worse still selective context to support their arguments. The comments on e.g. HN probably have about the same 'median' quality (OK, lower) but if the topic is relevant to the site's interests, the highest quality post will greatly exceed anything you will find in a paper. If it's a contentious point, someone will oppose it. I remember a thread on the Fukushima disaster (sadly I can't find it) containing a detailed discussion of the situation between a few people who had designed / worked on nuclear plants, and its depth and balance made the journalists look like a bunch of children shouting for attention. If there was an issue concerning security, I know I'd want to know what tptacek had to say about it; conversely, I happen to know a couple of WSJ journalists and frankly I'd take anything they say with a bucket of salt, apart perhaps from wine recommendations.

StratFor (for example) seems maybe worth it but I feel like the generalist reach and short form style of big news stops it from ever truly educating. I guess what I'm trying to say here is OK, the experience might be more pleasant, but what makes you think WaPo / Guardian / NYT content is even comparably as good as a blogger dedicated to the topic? (honest question to anyone)

BigJeffeRonaldo2• 9 years ago

Recent events have convinced me not to follow such a course of action. Most of the media seems more intent on printing fake news that fits their agenda than honest investigation, leading to the more sarcastic among us to refer to WaPo as Jeff Bezos' blog, etc. The media has a lot to do to recover their standing in my eyes before I'll read their work, much less pay them for it.

golemotron• 9 years ago

Something people don't appreciate about the culture wars: as left-facing publications paywall, they yield ground to free right-facing ones.

thomasthomas• 9 years ago

This is why google needs to get into social search. WSJ is basically moving discovery from traditional search to social search. how many searches across social platforms is google completely missing out on? I know for certain topics, i run to twitter to search as opposed to google. buy google already

user5994461• 9 years ago

This article makes no sense.

The Google loophole only works half the time at best.

All articles posted on HN invariably end up with the same discussion:

1) "Behind a paywall. Can't read it."

2) "You need to use the google link"

3) "The google link also gives a paywall."

4) "It worked for me."

5) "Doesn't work for me."

Neliquat2• 9 years ago

If you cant just click on it, its paywalled. Idk why we put up with all this bs for the so so rag that is the WSJ. I just downvote paywalls and move on.

hollerith2• 9 years ago

I just downvote paywalls and move on.

I am confused. I always thought that on HN only comments can be downvoted.

Did you mean "flag paywalls and move on"?

desireco42• 9 years ago

I welcome this move. It will stop their articles being posted here and in other forums, we simply can't read them. While WSJ does have good content, I will not pay for it and this will make sure it doesn't trick me into clicking links and have to close browser.

On other hand, for their business to continue to grow, they need to come up with way to show us that content somehow, maybe not the one they charge for but something that can display excellence.

Good examples would be ArsTechnica and Nautilus.

dforrestwilson• 9 years ago

I have found that the best way to get past editorial bias is to aggregate using Realclearpolitics.com

hnbroseph6• 9 years ago

after this election i'm even less interested in any newspaper subscriptions than i was before.

they're all biased liars, or at least run stories buy such authors.

msimpson• 9 years ago

So the best offer the WSJ can provide is "All Access Digital" for $198 over 12 months, after which the price is doubled to $396 for the same length of time. That means, eventually, you'll be spending about $33 a month just to read what are mostly AP stories without even the guarantee of an ad-free experience.

How is this attractive?

The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

Related Stories