Finally...

It has taken me long enough, but I finally finished putting in the billing arrangements to pay for two online news subscriptions that I regularly use, The New York Times and The Guardian UK.  I have been complaining to myself for too long that I need to subscribe, but have never put all the pieces in place, but now I managed to subscribe and only one will be billed monthly, and now I don't need to worry about how many NYTimes articles I read in a given month.  Like virtually everyone, I love the concept that "information want to be free" or whatever Google's earlier phrasing may have been, but one thing I do think has been lost is just who is paying for the information to get placed on the internet initially, prior to the reader being able to read it for free?  For the most part everyone pretends advertising pays for it all, even as various sites go under due to lack of said advertising and no other revenue streams in place.  As much as anything, I have avoided these two sites because I didn't like maxing my article limit or anything else that stopped me from reading whatever I liked.  I have no problem paying for the material, just had a problem of figuring out when was a good time to set up all the accounts (lazy if a lousy but convenient excuse).