I agree with all of this. I wasn't saying it really should be free. I'm saying it was more obvious it should not be free when transportation and storage costs were higher.

I have a paid subscription to the NYT. I know they earn a lot from advertisers, but I do not expect their reporting to be free to me.

"Newspapers were never intended to be impartial reporters of facts. "
Isn't this what people want, what people will pay for? Clearly some people want to hear only what they wish were true, but people seeking the truth just want to know what's really happening. Maybe that's impossible because human biases always creep in, but we can damn well try.

For example, I think President Trump is a Amway-style marketing person in a job he's completely unsuited for. But if he doesn't something smart, it doesn't cost me anything. In fact, it would be an interesting story to read about someone who comes off as a clown in his public persona did something intelligent. I wouldn't aim to read reporting seeks only facts that confirm my existing view. The value of news is that it's new information.

It is a small book dense with ideas. The price is right. I got mine at Barnes & Noble.

You are paying for content. Newspapers were never intended to be impartial reporters of facts. They always were produced and read along political lines. There were always many Banner type sheets. Economics forced mergers: New York Herald-Tribune; Chicago Sun-Times; Austin American-Statesman. Better technologies were part of it, but not the important part.

You probably are well-aware that "free" to the reader, viewer, or listener just means that the medium is selling consumers to advertisers. The NYT survived while seven other New York dailies failed, because it became "America's newspaper." Even in the 1990s, I remember local bookstores in Michigan that sold the Sunday NYT on subscription, though there were always a few copies available for cash-and-carry. At that same time The WSJ was broadcast via satellite to regional printers. Editions came out via delivery truck in time for the morning work day.

Your point about the lowering of costs increasing the number of freelance reporters is accurate. But even now, you get sites such as Huffington Post, PJTV, and many others that built a following in order to make advertising pay. Cheap as it may be, there is a cost to production.

And Snyder's point is that what is being produced is truth. You don't write that off the top of your head. Opinionating is one thing, but what I get paid for takes the work he describes: travel, interviews, contacts, drafts and rewrites, and deadlines that matter.

I also liked the part about a march toward an inevitable better future or longing for the good old days. In living memory, everything's been getting better-- no more major wars between world powers, decreasing crime, increasing technology, prosperity, and medical treatments, and increasing expectation of personal liberty. It could be a 70 year blip. It could be known in the future as the "post-atomic peace" or something like that, where nuclear bombs prevented major conflict and people were still afraid to use them. The next 70 years could be miserable. I don't think that will happen. I think the prosperity will continue. But we shouldn't take it for granted.

The other side of the coin, conservatives' view that the world was vastly better at some point in recent history, is incomprehensible to me.

That was all interesting. I can find no highlights b/c the article is all highlights.

Regarding paying for content, it seemed more natural when distributing content was more expensive. You paid for the media (paper, CD, tape, book), the retailer that stored it on a shelf, the truck that moved it, and the people who created the content on it all at once. Now that the cost of the media, "shelf", and "truck" are nearly zero, it seems like the content should be free too.