alt Hacker NewsMaybe I'm just getting old, but I've gotten tired of these "Journalists shouldn't try to make their living by finding profitable ads, they should just put in ads that look pretty but pay almost nothing and supplement their income by working at McDonalds" takes.
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I'm pretty sure people would read more and click on more ads if they didn't have to endure waiting for 49 MB of crap and then navigating a pop-up obstacle course for each article.
In the case of the New York Times, they have subscriptions and many are willing to pay for their work - but their subscriptions are not ad-free.
This argument is valid if journalism was actually journalism instead of just ripping off trending stories from HN and Reddit and rehashing it with sloppy AI and calling it a day and putting in 4 lines of text buried inside 400 ads.
49MB or homelessness? There is surely other options.
> Journalists shouldn't try to make their living by finding profitable ads
I mean, they can absolutely try. That doesn't mean they should succeed.
Well, I'm going to block the ads anyway (or just leave), so if they're trying to find profitable ads, they may need to revise their strategy.