The comments are indeed great, aren't they? I'm not a Times reader since it went (figuratively) redtop, but that was a much more articulate and cogent set of comments than I'd expected.
I’m not a natural Times reader either, but it’s one of the last titles standing that still makes enough money (through paper sales and online subscriptions, as well as ads) to hire and nurture actual journalists, rather than scrape around for clicks using inflammatory (but inaccurate) titles as bait.
Just as video killed the radio star, the internet is responsible for the near-total death of decent quality journalism. Society is far the poorer for it, sadly.
As an aside, I think the share token thing is pretty genius - it allows for a bigger audience than pure subscription, and current subscribers sharing to their own networks works as free advertising.
It’s a very clever midway between total paywall and completely open access (which is becoming increasingly worthless as the unseemly battle for clicks rages on) and much better than the Telegraph’s mixture of free and ‘premium’ content, (which I find frustrating because most of the things I click on are dead ends, so I just leave the site). At least with clicking on Times articles you always get the first few paragraphs!
Well done to the Times and to Janice Turner for having the fortitude to consistently engage in this debate (and to keep the comment function on, something that the Guardian is far too cowardly to do).
Also, more on-topic - Damian Barr is clearly a prick - he’s been thoroughly outed as using supposed trans-supporting as a cover for misogyny, if he hadn’t allowed his woman-hating to thoroughly cloud his judgement, he could’ve at least cleaned up his past commentary before it came back to bite him on the arse.