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Comment by orbifold | Hacker News Reader

I agree and ironically I still find reading the paper edition of a high quality news paper to be much more pleasurable than scrolling through a news feed or navigating the ad-laden webpages of a newspaper. In fact the user experience on most of them is so much worse that it is almost laughable.

Also since the articles are laid out physically before you in a predetermined order, far more of your senses are engaged. You are also more likely to serendipitously read an article far from what you would normally be interested in.

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>navigating the ad-laden webpages of a newspaper.

Another HN-reader who doesn't use an ad-blocker?

Occasionally, I get to see things like the NYT on someone's computer who doesn't have an ad-blocker installed, and it is deeply shocking and quite disturbing.

With an ad-blocker, however, it's a remarkably pleasant experience, with almost zero distractions. There's even a "physical layout" that works more or less the same way as the paper version.

Caveat: I do pay for a subscription to the NYT, which may change my experience somewhat.

I use uBlock origin and still find a lot of news sites cancerous on desktop.

Having paid for newspapers and running an adblocker, you really can't compare the experience. An adblocker doesn't give you descriptive headlines, a sensible layout of articles or even content that is meant to give you a reasonable overview of the world.

I remember the Economists app, having layout with sensibly named articles in sections that are relevant (so I can skip the style section), and first paragraphs that layout the meat of the article so I could skim it. Very good for me, but terrible for "engagement".

I can subscribe to them, unfortunately because they also run dark-patterns: you can subscribe online, but have to call a number during British Business hours to unsubscribe (I sent an angry email to their support, but still).

I subscribe to the Santa Fe New Mexican (local rag), NYT and the Guardian. It's a small sample size, but they are all ad-free for me, sensibly layed out and a pleasure to read, using any of AdBlock+, AdNauseam or uBlock Origin (I've switched in this order as the earlier ones become ineffective against ... YouTube ads)

In the age of polarisation, you should definitely keep up with at least one right-of-centre outlet. National Review is still of high standards

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