I’m irritated at all the barriers I run into when I’m trying to read something online. This is important to me, because when it comes to getting information, I am first and foremost a reader.
While I do ask questions of people who know a lot about a subject – part of the work of being a reporter is learning to ask good questions – I often use that information as a jumping-off point to do more reading.
I used to listen to the radio news (meaning NPR) a lot when I lived alone, but now about the only thing I listen to are podcasts when I’m cooking.
And I’ve always detested television “news.” The last time I recall seriously watching television for breaking news was on September 11, 2001. Most of the time it’s too superficial to be worth watching.
Anyway, these days the internet is better for breaking news. In some cases, social media is better than more traditional sources, so long as you double check what it says.
While in the past I subscribed to print newspapers and while I still subscribe to a few print magazines, I get most of my news online these days. I subscribe to several digital publications, plus a variety of email newsletters, and I read many others piecemeal. I also read blogs, even if that is no longer considered cool.
Obviously I also read lots of books – both print and ebook – but the issues that brought on this rant have to do with the reading I do online.
First of all, every time I open The New York Times, which I do pay (way too much) for, they try to upsell me. They want me to add more readers on my subscription. They want me to subscribe to their premium features.
Ads pop up here and there. Obviously the print editions have ads as well, but I don’t recall seeing so many in print for things that are very close to being scams. (I just clicked on a story and a test that purports to tell you whether you have dementia popped up as an ad.)
I can mostly ignore the ones on news stories, but the online equivalent of what is called a “house ad” in the newspaper business – an ad promoting the publication – is often positioned over what I’m trying to read.
Further, I note that I have been subscribing to the Times for a long time, long enough to have originally had sports news as part of my subscription. Then they bought The Athletic. Whenever I forget and click on a sports story, they pop up to tell me I have to pay more if I want to get that.
That just reminds me that they reduced what I got for my subscription while increasing the cost.
I also subscribe to The Nation, and while I get a nice PDF of it every month, I mostly read the daily updates that come in email. For a long time, I had to constantly log in to make them recognize that I was a subscriber, but now that they’ve fixed that problem, every piece I click on asks me to donate in addition.
I know The Nation is nonprofit and operates on a tight budget, but really: every story I read asks for money? And yeah, they also have ads online, many of which block the article while I’m reading.
Of course publications I don’t pay for are constantly asking for money, even the ones that don’t have paywalls. And many that don’t have paywalls still want me to register in order to read their stuff.
Frankly, it’s not just the money. I am damned if I want to set up another account and password. And I’m pretty sure that they’re getting a something in return for my signup even without my credit card. Lord knows Facebook – also choked with ads, not to mention “AI”-generated crap – is making money off of what I do on there.
Then, of course, there are newsletters. In the current environment, everybody has a newsletter, and most of them want to be paid for them.
And I get it, I really do. I’m a writer and I know it’s work. But damn it, I can’t pay for everything. I confine myself to paying for a few people who I know really need the money and for the ones that I absolutely have to read all of regularly.
And of course, all those newsletters ask for money, though they’re nicer about it if you’re a paying subscriber.
I would really prefer reading all those people in publications instead of individually, which is why most of my newsletter subscriptions are to some good group publications and magazines.
I have noticed that some smaller publications I subscribe to are much less in your face. Coyote, a new collectively-run publication in the San Francisco Bay Area, rarely brings up money. I hope that continues.
That brings me to the need to tell a website whether they can use my data. While this happens a lot when I’m on a site that sells things, it also happens when I click on news articles from social media or elsewhere. It’s bad enough when I can just click reject, but a lot of pages make me go to a separate page and specify what I’m rejecting even though they know and I know that I’m going to reject everything I can and still read the page.
Cookies, of course, should be opt in and not opt out, but we all know how that goes.
Such pages also generally want me to subscribe before I even see what’s on the page. Some even offer deals if I’ll just sign up for text messages. All of that pops up before I can even see what I’m looking for.
I do not like to be interrupted! And that’s really what this rant is about. I’m tired of being interrupted. (We won’t even start on junk phone calls and texts from politicians I never even heard of.)
I just want to read things.
There really has to be a better way to run our information system.
I hear you!