They seemed to be getting along just fine for quite some time, recent changes seemed rather abrupt. I am ok with advertising, affiliate links, whatever, just as long as editorial/advertising are clearly demarcated and, moreso, I feel that I can trust the contributors. I (and I’ve heard others echo this sentiment) no longer feel like I can trust the staff when they post links like ‘Check out this really cool X that totally changed the way I do X’ or ‘Amazon has these great X’s on sale that are totally great for X’. I get that people need to make money. The questions important to me are ‘What is the balance, how MUCH money do you need to make, and how far are you willing to go to make it?’
P.S. I would also support a subscription fee, if I believed editorial wasn’t already compromised. I had hoped that by mid 2010’s we would have had an acceptable micro-payment paradigm established so we would have that option, instead of advertising, which seems to be turning into a much more techy ethical issue now that so many people get their ‘news’ from bloggers instead of professional journalists.
