Readers of this forum will know that I have, for many years (and hopefully helpfully) posted various news items in the relevant boards and topics here. I have really enjoyed doing so, bringing sometimes perhaps more obscure items to your attention.

Recently, however, I have found that posting items here from the press has become increasingly 'fussy'.  Many of the national newspapers now put their online full story behind a firewall, requiring subscription, and many local newspapers have added restrictions to require registration and acceptance of all cookies, for example. I do understand their reasons for doing so - they are commercial organisations, after all (unlike the Coffee Shop forum, which is free for all to view )

I have therefore reined back on my posting here of such 'news and interesting items'.  I will continue to post such items, but with just an explanatory heading and a hyperlink to the source item.  It will then be up to any of our readers to decide whether they want to subscribe, register or accept all cookies to read the full item.

My one exception is the BBC: they remain 'open access', and I continue to stumble across (to me, anyway) interesting news items of a transport nature. The BBC continue to allow me to quote from them (I always credit my source) and link to the illustrative images in their news items. (Whether some of those illustrative images are relevant is a discussion for another place. )

As ever, I hope this helps.  CfN. 

 
I too have noticed that it's become more difficult to read full articles without first registering and/or accepting/rejecting cookies, and I'm inclined to assume that if I can access a particular website without too much of a problem, then others can also. But I'm careful about referring to my local online newspaper, the Reading Chonicle, as I subscribe to it to be able to read their articles in full. (I wince at the lack of journalistic skills and local knowledge - and at some of the readers' comments, with a couple of people regularly exchanging insults about their alleged sexual interests and the daily racist remark from one particular person.)

 
Quite often news stories are based on press releases from Network Rail, local councils or other bodies who are actually quite keen to spread the word on what they are up to.

These press releases won’t have annoying ads or journalist-induced errors, so it’s worth taking the time to try and find them. Often it will be appropriate to quote them in full. Citing the source should cover any question of copyright.

 

I have found at times that it's very rewarding to dig into links and research that's being reported even in advert-infected, paywall-bounded content, and then to report the real meat stuff behind.