Sharing swiss newspaper subscriptions

There are many newspapers, magazines and online resources offering free articles. Once they are used up, you have to pay. Considering the breadth of my interests, I would have to pay for 20+ subscriptions, even though I might be interested in reading only a few articles in each. I don’t want to spend that amount of money and will be waiting for integration of micropayment.

In the meantime, I downloaded this browser extension: GitHub - iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome: Bypass Paywalls web browser extension for Chrome and Firefox.

Works like a charm on many media sites. Unfortunately not on smartphones.

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I think that good information comes with a price. Nobody work for free except if its volunteering but that is not the case with journalists.

Press and press liberty is imho a cornerstone of democracies and should be defended as such.

Paying for newspaper abonnement is one of my monthly expense I regret the least.

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I agree. That’s why I’ve made contributions to Wikipedia and Guardian in the past. Other media have annual subscription at 50-250 CHF. In today’s landscape, it is important IMHO to get an independent viewpoint. For my various interests, it amounts to around 20 products. This would cost me around 2000 CHF.

Being frugal, I like to get most bang for the buck. What is the cheapest way to stay informed over a wide range of media?

(a) Library subscription was mentioned in this threat - I got it for free in Luxembourg, and it gave me legally access to a number of press products.

(b) Old style coffee shops used to have a number of newpapers and magazines. They’re free to browse.

any other ideas?

Similar to the library: At the University of Zurich in the main building there was a box with ~20 daily newspapers from all over Europe. Free for anyone to read whenever they wanted. IDK if it’s still there or if other places have the same service. Maybe look at a local Zentralbibliothek if you’re in a big enough place to have one.

Though you could have that for free, if you wanted to.

Day-to-day news and the daily blabber you can mostly just as well get for free on Blick.ch, 20min and from public broadcasters (SRF, BBC, Deutsche Welle) or free services (CNN, Al Jazeera, El País, Reuters). Looking for something more particular? Investments? There‘s Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Cash.ch. You’re into IT ir consumer electronics? No problem, enough online news sites catering to you (such as The Verge, Golem). And your favourite sports league probably has a website as well.

For more deeply researched and in-depth articles, a weekly magazine-style format often does just as well, if they aren‘t even recycling articles from their daily paper editions.

I share an NZZ subscription with a friend, which we pay for. I do believe in paying a for quality journalism. We just use the same login on our devices.

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I found out that for a lifelong subscription of 21.- CHF you can subscribe the Tessin cantonal Biblio system which let you borrow 4 ebooks per months and have online access to a lot of news papers. Swiss and internationals.
As example you can read the NZZ and Wall Street journal for free. You can access also previous copy (if the article you are interested is not the today one). Some newspapers let you open articles also in text form. This allow you, as example, thanks to an option integrated on the online app to translate an NZZ article to french or other language. (Some newspapers open as high resolution image only, for this one no translation options)

Here the link if you want to check the offered catalogue before subscribe:

Then click:
“Esplora il catalogo”

I think that the only potential issue with this solution is that there is no guarantee that the offer will include your favourite newspapers forever but eve just for 1 year it is cheaper from what you get and it is a legal solution.

You can gain access also if you have a Biblio card from other canton if they take part of this system on national level:

Under partner you will se if your cantonal Biblio is part of the recognition system. In this case you should just make recognise your card by sending an email and getting your login data.

Unfortunately the financial times and the Economist are not available on the offer at the moment but no system is perfect :wink:

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Do they have limited copies of newspapers? Like if 10 people are reading the WSJ and they have only 10, you need to wait.

I did not find an answer looking through the explanation page but so far I never had to wait for any newspaper :person_shrugging:

Do you know PressReader?
It’s a subscription service that has a very generous :earth_americas: worldwide catalogue of printed journals :newspaper_roll: and magazines. It’s the ‘Spotify’ of printed media… The monthly subscription is 29,90.
BUT
if you access it using wireless network of (certain) schools and universities, or (some) public libraries in Switzerland, you have access to the catalogue for free (and you can download the pdf of the printed editions with their app while using the library’s wifi… Geneve, Lausanne, La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel…).

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Get a bibliothek card für 20 - 40 chf per year and most of them offer pressreader access for free :slight_smile:

Example:
https://www.stadtbibliothekaarau.ch/services/formulare/anmeldung-stadtbibliothek.html/779

or with onleihe:

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I finally did it and joined my local municipalities’ library system today (for free).

I’m only beginning to scratch the surface, and they seem to have access limits on newspapers / magazines, which means that some of the most in-demand may not be available on the spot (more or less like a real library though).

I was looking for two newspaper articles from newspapers in Germany that I recently came across but that were paywalled on the newspapers’ own websites. One of them as obscure and with as limited of interest and audience as it gets and already five years old - or, in other words, as obscure as it gets.

The interface of the online library may not be the most intuitive and consumer-friendly I’ve ever seen, but lo and and behold, I could easily find access both articles and read them - in text.

But even for more popular content/magazine the sheer breadth and selection is astonishing.

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