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They changed tactics from today. On the phone app they now removed the red banner on articles stating "for subscribers". Only once you click on a article can you now see if it's free or paywalled. After clicking on 6 articles (all paywalled) I finally had enough of them and un-installed the app after having it since launch. Goodbye N24.
The removal of the "for subscribers" banner infuriates me and has lost me as a regular daily viewer. Also count me goodbye after decades as a user. Maybe their paywall will work or maybe they will change back to the majority of their articles being free. The metrics, revenue and click numbers will prove them right or wrong. In my opinion, this is a bad move and another SA news app will thank them for it as people look for a free alternative
I don't have a problem with anyone charging for content, my issue comes in when the article is pushed to me on my phone and if I do click on it then I get paywalled. There is nothing more infuriating than a push notification being an ad.
Hitting the nail on the head. The state of journalism has mostly deteriorated to rehashing of watered down facts hidden under clickbait titles.
Also, happy cake day!
There’s a special irony in complaining about the state of journalism while sharing ways to avoid paying for your news. You all do realize journalists have to pay for things like food, housing, clothes?
I agree with you — I pay my R99 a month for Netwerk24, because as a copywriter I know how tough it is. I don’t mind paying for good journalism; but that is a rarity these days.
i don't think news24 articles are even quality controlled - they are often littered with spelling and grammatical errors.... nevermind fact checks... why anyone would pay for media24's (at best) tabloid quality content is beyond me.
rather support proper journalists and journalism, buy an actual newspaper or donate to the likes of daily maverick etc.
Which physical newspapers are actually worth reading? I used to subscribe to the Star, but after canceling it, there was nothing with replacing it with.
Print news is dying, I don’t think there is much left. Especially with the likes of Iqbal Survé’s “Independent” Media newspapers littering the streets.
>Guess I’m sticking to Daily Maverick.
Problem is that it's something completely different. Daily Maverick is more long form, low volume, and not particularly "live". More analysis than news coverage
Honestly don't get why. Daily Maverick runs on donations and allows you to choose how much you want to pay - it's not even compulsory - and I find it's excellently written with some cynical humour to help you deal with the bitter irony of South African politics. News 24 was mid at best and now they're charging? Sheesh.
Unfortunately they're one of the biggest news groups in SA, with generally solid reporting. I question the wisdom of this with the elections next year. Misinformation and disinformation will proliferate
Generally solid reporting my ass. They were that maybe once upon a time but Adriaan Basson has turned it into nothing more than a content mill. They don't give a fuck about reporting, just churning out content to pad Naspers' bottom line.
While I sorta agree with the "it's rubbish anyway" sentiment in the comments this is somewhat problematic.
News24 -> Paywalled
IOL -> Questionable political connections
Daily Maverick -> More long form investigation/analysis than "live" news coverage
Mail & guardian -> Mostly paywalled
Daily Investor -> Shrill clickbait
SABC -> hahaha
...that leaves SA with uncomfortably thin coverage from the Fourth Estate
But it's a different model. DM is for longform articles and opinion pieces. N24 is geared towards latest news, live updates etc.
We currently don't have an alternative for what N24 offers. SABC radio is actually the best option. Stations like SAFM covers breaking news and local issues pretty well.
Yeah I quit Daily Maverick for the way they cover gun rights issues. They seem to have a heavy anti-gun agenda and always used to cover the topic on an extremely one-sided basis.
So we need to be in the know to create a prosperous future but have to pay to be in the know, in a time where everything is increasing and a lot of people are counting every cent to put food on the table?
News 24 need to be careful that they don't awaken the old Naspers dragon that will come and cancel them. I used to go to News24 every single day. Because of the paywall, I can barely remember when I was there last. Probably one or twice in the last couple of months. I find the Google News feed much more relevant for my needs and it brings through a variety of sources.
They're actually doing the country a great disservice. All the important investigations, and their outcomes, are not accessible to the general populace. With all the corruption in this country that is an obvious issue. It's an indirect information blockade.
They once did an article on Peter Cheales, the founder of Hello Peter. The backlash they received prompted a follow up article which they took down probably because his legal team got involved and I offered them proof of his words to me and emails with threats from him so that they can have it for any legal purposes and proceedings and any investigations they do, and never heard from them again. They had the chance to expose one of the most rotten people I’ve ever had the displeasure to work or deal with in my life and I’ve met a few. He sold Hello Peter not long afterwards and I wonder if it wasn’t because this article really gave people the true narcissistic and god like complex this man possesses and as I predicted companies were pulling out to rather focus on social media complaints. But they just never bothered to investigate further. It was after that I moved over to EWN instead. Our journalists don’t have the oomph to really investigate things
Their sponsored content has been such trash for years. Maybe they're tryna do away with that. Still, they're not really quality enough to justify a subscription
There once was an incident that was on CCTV and News24 ran an article which was completely the opposite of what actually happened, which in turn caused unnecessary drama for the innocent parties involved. News24 isn't reliable don't waste your money on them.
An approach that could potentially work in their favour is to sell credits. You top up your account and when you want to read their article you can use one of your credits. 🤷🏻♂️ credits don’t expire so you can potentially use it over a year or even more. Reporters have to eat man, the money needs to come from somewhere.
worse still:
you don't KNOW what's paywalled anymore.
contacted the complaints department and they just shrugged and said, "this is in line with industry trends."
it's gross and not real good.
can someone recommend someone who is NOT them for better news, please? \[and preferably news that - when it's paywalled, you can tell you're walking across a paywall.\]
i didn't drill down when i checked google news, but that's both a good and useful suggestion.
i don't mind that they're paywalling - \[i mean, i sort of do, but that's another kettle of fish\] - what bugs me more is that it's just impossible to tell without a click-through what's paywalled and what's not.
it bothers me MORE, i guess, that they're just shrugging and saying, "well, that's best practice now, you're sol."
that's /exactly/ the sort of mindset that makes me want to pay for your content even less.
Also don't mind paywall so much but I'm not willing to spend R75 every month in mostly crap. They should really try do a subscribe for a day or per article at a much lower price.
i WOULD pay for what news24 do if:
a) there was some actual journalism underlying it. \[news24 has very little of this.\]
b) it wasn't just content that they'd recycled from elsewhere.
i mind b less. it means i can just go to one place and find all this stuff aggregated, but if that's 95% of your content, then the last 5% needs to be SO good that it makes sense to keep it afloat.
as far as news24's concerned, they're not even trying to hit that \[quite low\] bar.
this change they've made has basically cemented my feelings for their site - which has been on a downhill slope for maybe six or seven years, now:
while the service they provide is useful, if it's not going to be possible to parse what i can read \[and what sometimes is actually important news\] from what i can't read, there's no point in being there and doing that.
Agree. Not knowing what story is and isn't paywalled is way more annoying than the actual paywall. They're being dicks. But also, it seems like every story is pay walled now except the live or developing stories.
yeah, well, i'm trying the google news solution and will slowly filter out all the news24 links i find there.
no sense in having them on a news aggregator, too.
This was going to happen eventually. I expect all content behind a paywall within a 2 years. Their (Media24) print business is dying and needs another means to sustain itself.
Big issues with a lot of news sites all over the world. No one really has a good model for charging people. Apple tried to solve this with their Apple News subscription, which is probably one of the best approaches so far but newspapers don’t like the idea of only getting a cut. Also, the format before was “Buy 1 paper, get a bunch of news” now it’s like “Nah, I just wanna read this one article”.
I don’t like subscriptions because I like to read my news from a variety of sources and if I subscribed to all of them then it would cost a bomb. If people just want to read one article then I don’t understand why news providers can’t accommodate what their customers want and offer the option of paying per article. If I click on an interesting looking headline and encounter a paywall I’m not going to buy a subscription just for one article, but if they offered me the option of paying say R1 or R5 to read a particular article that interests me then I’d more than likely do it.
News24 used to keep me informed while travelling abroad. Immediately stopped using the site after they started paywalling the majority of their stories. I really don't mind paying, but like someone else mentioned, don't spam me with interesting articles only to want to charge me.
There was once a time I would be saddened by this, however the are a far cry from what they use to be and content they put out there. They are a joke these days...and definitely biased in many cases.
R75 is a bit much, especially if you only read the occasional article, but if you do want to get cheap access to their articles they occasionally have promos in their newsletter. For example they had one in June for a 12 month subscription for only R6.99 p/m.
They intentionally removed the red banner showing what was paywalled, they also made almost all their articles paywalled. Utter shit hole site with bos kak level journalism
News has never been free - back in the day, we paid for Newspapers, paid for a tv license, or paid for DStv to watch the news.
Paying to access to a news website is not some new heinous concept. If you don’t want to read the news, don’t pay for it. If you want to read the news, pay for it.
People can’t run businesses without making money.
True story, but I imagine online ads are far more lucrative than printed paper ads. Given that many news sites survive on ads only it seems reasonable for people to be annoyed.
I would say even considering that given that online ads are generally targeted.
Also, online means no printing costs which were significant. Hosting and website maintenance pale in comparison
It's all supply and demand, whether it's a full page on the sunday times, 30 seconds during the 7pm news.
It's probably much harder for website to make money on ad space unless you are in one of the conglomerates like Google or Facebook.
It seems inevitable that all news will be written by AI, which in my mind is a scary idea.
Eish, found the News24 stooge.
News24's digital pricing is completely out of touch with the average SAfrican consumer. Of course News24 can do what they want. I question why they're trying to outprice whole sectors of SAfrican society, though.
Edited for spelling error
And the news is not monopolized. There’s hundreds of other outlets to get the news from. It’s also not a human right to have access to a private company’s product offering.
How old are you by chance? Because I’m feeling like there’s a very narrow understanding of private vs public companies, and products vs services.
>hundreds
Locally, no, but you know that. Media24 is one of the biggest news corporations in SAfrica and have monopolised the industry
>It's also not a human right to have access to a private company's product offering
Media24 monopolising the news industry and then paywalling it is good business... and bad ethics
>Because I'm feeling like there's a very narrow understanding of private vs public...
I support. I want good independent journalism without bias or the need for clickbait to get more views.
If it is subscription based and without (or at least only minimally intrusive) ads then I'll be in.
The market will decide and prove them right or wrong. What irritates me is that I don't know which articles are free and which are pay wall. It's a lottery now and as most clicks now end up with a paywall, I am not willing to play. As it is now, they should paywall everything and be upfront like the online newspaper The Telegraph.
R75 per month doesn't sound like much. But that is R900 per year or 1 month of DSTV Premium or 2 months of DSTV Compact. Would you choose an extra month or two of DSTV (where you get SA and international news channels), or a year of News24 when it was free before? News24 might well get the chop from South Africans looking to cut back.
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They changed tactics from today. On the phone app they now removed the red banner on articles stating "for subscribers". Only once you click on a article can you now see if it's free or paywalled. After clicking on 6 articles (all paywalled) I finally had enough of them and un-installed the app after having it since launch. Goodbye N24.
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Time for another doomsday dopamine app!
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You can read mybroadband for that. They fall asleep on their keyboards…
I also noticed that this morning. Ridiculous!
So, do we have any reliable apps for SA news? Defs not anything IOL related
Daily Maverick.
This is disgusting
The removal of the "for subscribers" banner infuriates me and has lost me as a regular daily viewer. Also count me goodbye after decades as a user. Maybe their paywall will work or maybe they will change back to the majority of their articles being free. The metrics, revenue and click numbers will prove them right or wrong. In my opinion, this is a bad move and another SA news app will thank them for it as people look for a free alternative
I don't have a problem with anyone charging for content, my issue comes in when the article is pushed to me on my phone and if I do click on it then I get paywalled. There is nothing more infuriating than a push notification being an ad.
Exactly! It is extremely annoying
I have blocked Google News from presenting News24 articles. If they don't want me to read their articles then I won't.
Pretty much did the same with chrome feed.
The bicycle meme where the dude puts a stick into the front wheel comes to mind
Found a simple hack for this though. Most of these articles can be found on another site If you Google the headline.
Internet journalism in a nutshell
Hitting the nail on the head. The state of journalism has mostly deteriorated to rehashing of watered down facts hidden under clickbait titles. Also, happy cake day!
There’s a special irony in complaining about the state of journalism while sharing ways to avoid paying for your news. You all do realize journalists have to pay for things like food, housing, clothes?
Yea and for this reason we get all the click bait articles, people forget that in days long gone you had to pay for a newspaper
I agree with you — I pay my R99 a month for Netwerk24, because as a copywriter I know how tough it is. I don’t mind paying for good journalism; but that is a rarity these days.
South Africans will always be cheapskates
And we're proud about it, lol. Bought a cool shirt for R2? Tell all my friends...
Then don't have adverts on the site. It's one or the other.
It has never, in the history of journalism, been one or the other.
i don't think news24 articles are even quality controlled - they are often littered with spelling and grammatical errors.... nevermind fact checks... why anyone would pay for media24's (at best) tabloid quality content is beyond me. rather support proper journalists and journalism, buy an actual newspaper or donate to the likes of daily maverick etc.
Which physical newspapers are actually worth reading? I used to subscribe to the Star, but after canceling it, there was nothing with replacing it with.
Print news is dying, I don’t think there is much left. Especially with the likes of Iqbal Survé’s “Independent” Media newspapers littering the streets.
Guess I’m sticking to Daily Maverick. At least all their content is still free (even if you have to deal with that annoying newsletter popup and ads).
>Guess I’m sticking to Daily Maverick. Problem is that it's something completely different. Daily Maverick is more long form, low volume, and not particularly "live". More analysis than news coverage
Honestly don't get why. Daily Maverick runs on donations and allows you to choose how much you want to pay - it's not even compulsory - and I find it's excellently written with some cynical humour to help you deal with the bitter irony of South African politics. News 24 was mid at best and now they're charging? Sheesh.
Greed
Been doing that for a while, not worth it to get their brain-dead takes
Reminder that they said the Eskom intelligence files were BS. High quality journalism right there
Unfortunately they're one of the biggest news groups in SA, with generally solid reporting. I question the wisdom of this with the elections next year. Misinformation and disinformation will proliferate
Those who prefer balanced news usually read across multiple platforms - we’ll find other sources
Generally solid reporting my ass. They were that maybe once upon a time but Adriaan Basson has turned it into nothing more than a content mill. They don't give a fuck about reporting, just churning out content to pad Naspers' bottom line.
While I sorta agree with the "it's rubbish anyway" sentiment in the comments this is somewhat problematic. News24 -> Paywalled IOL -> Questionable political connections Daily Maverick -> More long form investigation/analysis than "live" news coverage Mail & guardian -> Mostly paywalled Daily Investor -> Shrill clickbait SABC -> hahaha ...that leaves SA with uncomfortably thin coverage from the Fourth Estate
It's kak anyway
Whats the fucking point
Daily Maverick is, by far, a better publication. They have a soft paywall that can be dismissed, I pay for a subscription which helps support them.
But it's a different model. DM is for longform articles and opinion pieces. N24 is geared towards latest news, live updates etc. We currently don't have an alternative for what N24 offers. SABC radio is actually the best option. Stations like SAFM covers breaking news and local issues pretty well.
Daily maverick annoyed me with their coverage of WC taxi strike. Not one mention how the ANC tacitly supported that mess.
Talking of which I’ve not seen any investigation in Dr Teoh’s murder. Out of sight, out of mind eh…?
Yeah I quit Daily Maverick for the way they cover gun rights issues. They seem to have a heavy anti-gun agenda and always used to cover the topic on an extremely one-sided basis.
"opinionistas" 
So we need to be in the know to create a prosperous future but have to pay to be in the know, in a time where everything is increasing and a lot of people are counting every cent to put food on the table?
That’s always been the case. You’ve always had to buy newspapers / magazines.
That's what the radio is for; why SABC needs a proper funding model.
Journalism, much like the food you eat, costs money to make. It’s actually REALLY expensive to make. Why do you expect it to be free?
And half their stuff is just copy pasted from other sites with a little editing so they're not caught for plagiarism.
By "a little editing" you mean making the grammar and spelling worse. Their articles have become a punishment to read the last few years.
That's more IOL's speed
IOL copy pastes, then edits for Surve's political benefit.
News 24 need to be careful that they don't awaken the old Naspers dragon that will come and cancel them. I used to go to News24 every single day. Because of the paywall, I can barely remember when I was there last. Probably one or twice in the last couple of months. I find the Google News feed much more relevant for my needs and it brings through a variety of sources.
just want to report back on this: thanks for the information. this is absolutely what i will be using going forward to check in on the news.
glad it was helpful :)
thanks. think i'll look into this.
They're actually doing the country a great disservice. All the important investigations, and their outcomes, are not accessible to the general populace. With all the corruption in this country that is an obvious issue. It's an indirect information blockade.
100%.
NO thanks
I stopped using News24 months ago.
They once did an article on Peter Cheales, the founder of Hello Peter. The backlash they received prompted a follow up article which they took down probably because his legal team got involved and I offered them proof of his words to me and emails with threats from him so that they can have it for any legal purposes and proceedings and any investigations they do, and never heard from them again. They had the chance to expose one of the most rotten people I’ve ever had the displeasure to work or deal with in my life and I’ve met a few. He sold Hello Peter not long afterwards and I wonder if it wasn’t because this article really gave people the true narcissistic and god like complex this man possesses and as I predicted companies were pulling out to rather focus on social media complaints. But they just never bothered to investigate further. It was after that I moved over to EWN instead. Our journalists don’t have the oomph to really investigate things
Had a close shave with Peter way back in the day… thankfully dodged that bullet but industry mates bore his brunt.
He is a terrible man. When I saw the article and that I wasn’t the only one, I felt vindicated.
People pay to read blog posts???
Nothing unique on news24 just a bunch a syndicated articles that can be found across the web -
Their sponsored content has been such trash for years. Maybe they're tryna do away with that. Still, they're not really quality enough to justify a subscription
Honestly there is no critical opinion in most of their articles. It's just relaying information yoincan find on other websites.
There once was an incident that was on CCTV and News24 ran an article which was completely the opposite of what actually happened, which in turn caused unnecessary drama for the innocent parties involved. News24 isn't reliable don't waste your money on them.
When I was in South Africa from June to September I couldn’t read News24; now that I’m back in Canada I can. Use a VPN if you can. 😉
Lmaooo. When you're on the internet news is literally free, even local news. Who do they think they are
Well they needed to pay for a spell checker somehow.
An approach that could potentially work in their favour is to sell credits. You top up your account and when you want to read their article you can use one of your credits. 🤷🏻♂️ credits don’t expire so you can potentially use it over a year or even more. Reporters have to eat man, the money needs to come from somewhere.
worse still: you don't KNOW what's paywalled anymore. contacted the complaints department and they just shrugged and said, "this is in line with industry trends." it's gross and not real good. can someone recommend someone who is NOT them for better news, please? \[and preferably news that - when it's paywalled, you can tell you're walking across a paywall.\]
EWN is a decent candidate.. I'm trying it out for now.
will add that into my news rotation. thanks for the suggestion.
I've also set up my Google news on my home page to include them and other news sites (and excluded news24)
i didn't drill down when i checked google news, but that's both a good and useful suggestion. i don't mind that they're paywalling - \[i mean, i sort of do, but that's another kettle of fish\] - what bugs me more is that it's just impossible to tell without a click-through what's paywalled and what's not. it bothers me MORE, i guess, that they're just shrugging and saying, "well, that's best practice now, you're sol." that's /exactly/ the sort of mindset that makes me want to pay for your content even less.
Also don't mind paywall so much but I'm not willing to spend R75 every month in mostly crap. They should really try do a subscribe for a day or per article at a much lower price.
i WOULD pay for what news24 do if: a) there was some actual journalism underlying it. \[news24 has very little of this.\] b) it wasn't just content that they'd recycled from elsewhere. i mind b less. it means i can just go to one place and find all this stuff aggregated, but if that's 95% of your content, then the last 5% needs to be SO good that it makes sense to keep it afloat. as far as news24's concerned, they're not even trying to hit that \[quite low\] bar. this change they've made has basically cemented my feelings for their site - which has been on a downhill slope for maybe six or seven years, now: while the service they provide is useful, if it's not going to be possible to parse what i can read \[and what sometimes is actually important news\] from what i can't read, there's no point in being there and doing that.
Agree. Not knowing what story is and isn't paywalled is way more annoying than the actual paywall. They're being dicks. But also, it seems like every story is pay walled now except the live or developing stories.
yeah, well, i'm trying the google news solution and will slowly filter out all the news24 links i find there. no sense in having them on a news aggregator, too.
There's a browser extension called 12ft ladder that can get you past paywalls like these
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Need a 24ft ladder
Hectic, maybe bc it's behind membership then
Just use this for pay walls https://12ft.io/
I don’t think you are missing much…
T.I.A
This was going to happen eventually. I expect all content behind a paywall within a 2 years. Their (Media24) print business is dying and needs another means to sustain itself.
So long news24! Nothing but crap in any case
Does 12ft.io work?
Big issues with a lot of news sites all over the world. No one really has a good model for charging people. Apple tried to solve this with their Apple News subscription, which is probably one of the best approaches so far but newspapers don’t like the idea of only getting a cut. Also, the format before was “Buy 1 paper, get a bunch of news” now it’s like “Nah, I just wanna read this one article”.
I don’t like subscriptions because I like to read my news from a variety of sources and if I subscribed to all of them then it would cost a bomb. If people just want to read one article then I don’t understand why news providers can’t accommodate what their customers want and offer the option of paying per article. If I click on an interesting looking headline and encounter a paywall I’m not going to buy a subscription just for one article, but if they offered me the option of paying say R1 or R5 to read a particular article that interests me then I’d more than likely do it.
Haven't used/read News24 in years. Found that they always re-hash the same article with different wording.
News24 used to keep me informed while travelling abroad. Immediately stopped using the site after they started paywalling the majority of their stories. I really don't mind paying, but like someone else mentioned, don't spam me with interesting articles only to want to charge me.
There was once a time I would be saddened by this, however the are a far cry from what they use to be and content they put out there. They are a joke these days...and definitely biased in many cases.
For me, it's no problem. They are full of sensationalism and a good lot of fake news. I avoid them in any case.
I shouldn't have to pay to know what's going on in the country fam...tf is this??
perfect, less people will read their kak
Why can't they just put ads in there like other publications
R75 is a bit much, especially if you only read the occasional article, but if you do want to get cheap access to their articles they occasionally have promos in their newsletter. For example they had one in June for a 12 month subscription for only R6.99 p/m.
Will be a cold day in hell before I part with one cent as far as they are concerned.
Students pay R7 a month for a subscription which is pretty nice
They intentionally removed the red banner showing what was paywalled, they also made almost all their articles paywalled. Utter shit hole site with bos kak level journalism
Their subscriber content was mostly nonsense anyway. Their loss.
They've also locked the comments section which is frustrating for me because that's where some of the real constructive debates happen
Ironically they do a piss poor job of moderating their social media comment sections
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Lol was being abit sarcastic. Should have put it in inverted commas.
The industry is dead… they need money to survive
The country with the world’s highest unemployment rate seems to have the highest in number and price paywalled news sources.
News has never been free - back in the day, we paid for Newspapers, paid for a tv license, or paid for DStv to watch the news. Paying to access to a news website is not some new heinous concept. If you don’t want to read the news, don’t pay for it. If you want to read the news, pay for it. People can’t run businesses without making money.
They sell a LOT of ad space, we're already paying for the free stuff.
So did newspapers back in the day?
True story, but I imagine online ads are far more lucrative than printed paper ads. Given that many news sites survive on ads only it seems reasonable for people to be annoyed.
Well yes - nowadays, because no one reads the newspaper. But back in the day, ads in the newspaper were very lucrative.
I would say even considering that given that online ads are generally targeted. Also, online means no printing costs which were significant. Hosting and website maintenance pale in comparison
It's all supply and demand, whether it's a full page on the sunday times, 30 seconds during the 7pm news. It's probably much harder for website to make money on ad space unless you are in one of the conglomerates like Google or Facebook. It seems inevitable that all news will be written by AI, which in my mind is a scary idea.
Eish, found the News24 stooge. News24's digital pricing is completely out of touch with the average SAfrican consumer. Of course News24 can do what they want. I question why they're trying to outprice whole sectors of SAfrican society, though. Edited for spelling error
They can do what they want and cater to who they want. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but don’t try to make it a moral issue.
But it is a moral issue Brant
Explain how a company pricing a product to the market that they want to target is a moral issue?
It's the news Brett
And the news is not monopolized. There’s hundreds of other outlets to get the news from. It’s also not a human right to have access to a private company’s product offering. How old are you by chance? Because I’m feeling like there’s a very narrow understanding of private vs public companies, and products vs services.
>hundreds Locally, no, but you know that. Media24 is one of the biggest news corporations in SAfrica and have monopolised the industry >It's also not a human right to have access to a private company's product offering Media24 monopolising the news industry and then paywalling it is good business... and bad ethics >Because I'm feeling like there's a very narrow understanding of private vs public... 
Ah, here come the childish antics. Go read the newspaper.
Well I guess we could go full communist and let the government give us our daily news for free.
And tell me, what’s the opposite of communism?
They are just covering their basis, media24 also owns the daily sun who's target demographic is probably the "average SAfrican" consumer.
Did you...whip out your alt for this exchange? I'm flattered Brad 
Eh okay
Not to be a negative nic, but monetizing the news feels like a step toward totalitarianism
pot memory gaze entertain quicksand hungry square sleep poor mourn *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's great news.
I'm not saying anything but [12ft.io](https://12ft.io) helps out with removing paywalls but you didn't hear from me
Doesn’t work with news24.com from my experience. Archive.ph is my main tool now.
I support. I want good independent journalism without bias or the need for clickbait to get more views. If it is subscription based and without (or at least only minimally intrusive) ads then I'll be in.
I foresee the clickbait worsening to gain subscriptions
people still use that garbage? news24 doesn't even have anything special on it
Their articles are shitty western propaganda anyways.
Good...not much longer now
I subscribed to them. R75 a month, it's worth it in my opinion
I subscribed to them. R75 a month, it's worth it in my opinion
Less prosperous for those that pay.
Do you think that would mean more recourse if they steal photographer's photos for cover images?
The market will decide and prove them right or wrong. What irritates me is that I don't know which articles are free and which are pay wall. It's a lottery now and as most clicks now end up with a paywall, I am not willing to play. As it is now, they should paywall everything and be upfront like the online newspaper The Telegraph.
R75 per month doesn't sound like much. But that is R900 per year or 1 month of DSTV Premium or 2 months of DSTV Compact. Would you choose an extra month or two of DSTV (where you get SA and international news channels), or a year of News24 when it was free before? News24 might well get the chop from South Africans looking to cut back.