Could Askaboutmoney take out a corporate subscription to paywalled newspapers?

Mods, if my question / suggestion about paywalls are off topic, please suggest an alternative means or thread for the discussion, if you believe such discussion has merit.

The inclusion of paywalled links in on-thread discussions is pointless for those of us who don't have subscriptions to the rags publications concerned. We are excluded because of our poverty or our unwillingness to pay for subscriptions.

For AAM to help to keep discussions as inclusive as possible, could AAM take out a "corporate" subscription to specific, quality publications with explicit permission to reproduce content by means of links?

I would be willing to contribute to charges for this, as an AAM opt in/opt out extra.

An interesting idea mathepac

But it would be too much work. Someone would suggest we should take out a subscription to the Economist and when we refuse, there would be endless debate about it.

I doubt that The Irish Times would want any user of askaboutmoney to be able to access their website.

Paying for quality journalism is not a rejection of inclusion.

Brendan

mathepac said:

The inclusion of paywalled links in on-thread discussions is pointless for those of us who don't have subscriptions to the rags publications concerned.

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The Irish Independent and Irish Times have close to six figures in subscribers each.

I’d imagine they are over represented in AAM contributors.

I had subs to the online content of a few hard-copy publications down the years. The last one was The Times/Sunday Times which lapsed when my card's expiry date passed a couple of years ago and I never renewed.

My idea was about accessing content quoted in here rather than slavishly subscribing to "the lot", always, all the time, for questionable benefit or insight. Most of the news content is already available "free" with your TV licence off the telly, from the wireless, or from newspapers and magazines in public libraries.

I hear what you're saying @mugsymugsy but I believe the IP owner is entitled to a fair return on their production and publication costs.

I also hear what you are saying @Dr Strangelove but it seems to me from time-to-time that readers of rags might be over represented on t'internet, and readers of quality publications much less so. Decide for yourselves which is which.

As an aside, would a mod have a media contact they'd consider bouncing the idea off, unofficially?

Anyhow thanks for your inputs.

mathepac said:

My idea was about accessing content quoted in here rather than slavishly subscribing to "the lot", always, all the time, for questionable benefit or insight. Most of the news content is already available "free" with your TV licence off the telly, from the wireless, or from newspapers and magazines in public libraries.

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How would it work?

Say you wanted to access this article without a subscription to the Irish Times


If you post a link to it on askaboutmoney, it would appear in full on askaboutmoney?

Then people would register here to get free access to the Irish Times and link to all sorts of non-financial stuff.

mathepac said:

For AAM to help to keep discussions as inclusive as possible, could AAM take out a "corporate" subscription to specific, quality publications with explicit permission to reproduce content by means of links?

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I'm fairly certain that the corporate/institutional subscriptions that media/publishing businesses offer allow multiple users to access content, but they do not allow the content to be republished.

So, they won't offer a subscription that would work in a way that means an AAM post could link to their content, and the link would bypass their paywall.

What (in theory) you could do is take out an institutional subscription which would allow registered members of AAM to go to the publisher's site and read the article using login/acess credential provided to them by AAM, or which would allow them to access the content via a portal that only AAM members can access.

The cost of this would be signficant, and would depend on the number of registered members of AAM. I doubt that it's realistic to think of AAM implementing this.

mathepac said:

I had subs to the online content of a few hard-copy publications down the years. The last one was The Times/Sunday Times which lapsed when my card's expiry date passed a couple of years ago and I never renewed.

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The Times/Sunday Times regularly - indeed annoyingly regularly - offers annual subscriptions for a mere €5. Best value on the market (plus it includes Cormac Lucey!)

In fact there's one on now! Flash Sale €5 for 12 months. Ends soon.

I recently saw a similar offer from the Daily/Sunday Telegraph but I was too slow to sign up before it vanished into the ether.

For those of us who, as W B Yeats put it, must "... fumble in a greasy till and add the halfpence to the pence.." the few days around Black Friday are a great time to pick up bargain subscriptions to almost everything.

Marsupial said:

In fact there's one on now! Flash Sale €5 for 12 months. Ends soon.

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and on the website it reads "Billed as €5 for 12 months. Autorenews at €10 a month thereafter. Offer not available to current subscribers."

"Best value on the market (plus it includes Cormac Lucey!)"

Cormac's weekly recession forecast.

Use a new email address to apply for the 5 euro offer. Cancel before the renewal date.

I have been doing this for several years.