4 ms·

Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources any

Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources anyone can read, its a small niche I think. Also the average economist reader is probably quite high on income so I suspect thats a skews their ability to charge

Retric 11y ago
At 1$/week you can pay for 1 author per ~2,000 subscribers. That can work at a really small scale as long as the rest of your costs are kept low.
- eterm 11y ago
  $1/week is a lot for what a single author could put out. If you take into account time researching, I can't imagine that would amount to more an article per week at any kind of quality?
  - Retric 11y ago
    Let's say you have 40k readers and 50/50 overhead vs writers. So, 40k people pay 1$ and get to read the output from ~10 writers. Now, get another ~2k people to sign up and that just about covers another author assuming your overhead does not increase. Clearly, you can play with these numbers with various assumptions and readerships. But, the point is you can scale things down with paid subscribers.
metamet 11y ago
I really enjoy the print version of Popular Science, if you're looking for another.
eevilspock 11y ago
Quality and accountability is what happens when we pay. We've traded quality and accountability for "free" garbage floating in a sea of ads. The NYTimes is still too dependent on advertising. That they consider "native advertising" acceptable shows compromised journalistic principles. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera We call ourselves hackers and innovators. Yet instead of pouring our energies into figuring alternative business models and micropayment solutions, we spend our energies on more ways to capture users in viral schemes and then collect their data for sale to advertisers. As I wrote the other day: Where are our backbones to stand up against selling out the internet so that we can get rich quick? Because that is what the advertising business model is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? The saddest thing about Hacker News is that we all get behind radical things like FOSS (Bill Gates called it un-American) and Snowden, and fight SOPA and NSA violations of privacy, but because too many of our salaries depend on advertising revenue, our cognitive dissonance blinders go up lightning fast.
- ska 11y ago
  Quality and accountability is what happens when we pay. This may plausibly be necessary, but it certainly isn't sufficient.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I'd say you overestimate the number of people working on ad-supported software. Many, if not most of us are working on for-pay software and services. The reason I'm ambivalent about ads is not because it funds my paycheck (it doesn't, we charge for our services), but because for all their evils, ads work as a kind of enforced redistribution mechanism, and since geographic adjustments of prices work poorly on the web, I fear that any kind of payment system will inevitably lead to prices being set at the US middle class income level, shutting out everyone with a lower income level. I know can afford to pay for stuff, and I'm happy to do it, but that's only been true since I started working, and only because I'm lucky enough to have a decent job. I suppose "we'll figure it out" is one answer, but I'm afraid I can't put my heart behind a proposal that would have left my teenager self closed off from most of the web.
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    Imagine a world, pre-internet, where almost all books are handed out free, but with their pages loaded with ads, and their stories embedded with "native" ads and product placements. Imagine that book "stores" get a cut of the ad revenue and so are incented to stock and push whatever book titles "clicked" the most and contained the most ads? Authors in this world would say they have no choice, because readers will always choose the free book over the $10 or even $5 book. The bookstores only stock the free books for the same reason. In that world you would make exactly the same argument that you just made to me. I'm glad you work on non ad-supported software. But look at it from a consumption, share of revenue and availability perspective: ad supported software is eating the web.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      And in that world, I would have been able to read a lot of books that I wish I could have when I was growing up, when I only got 3-4 books per year, plus access to a poorly stocked library. Would I have traded? Yes, I probably would have. --- I also don't agree that one must oppose all advertising or none; we can oppose native ads and personal tracking without being necessarily opposed to well demarcated side ads.
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
One thing I enjoy about it is the audio edition. It is done well and allows me to enjoy the Economist on the go without sinking too much time into it.
- mikestew 11y ago
  Thanks for the reminder that I need to start using that on the way to work instead of the usual NPR or fluffy podcast. What little I've listened to it, it is quality, I just forget that I have it.

Retric 11y ago

At 1$/week you can pay for 1 author per ~2,000 subscribers. That can work at a really small scale as long as the rest of your costs are kept low.

eterm 11y ago
$1/week is a lot for what a single author could put out. If you take into account time researching, I can't imagine that would amount to more an article per week at any kind of quality?
- Retric 11y ago
  Let's say you have 40k readers and 50/50 overhead vs writers. So, 40k people pay 1$ and get to read the output from ~10 writers. Now, get another ~2k people to sign up and that just about covers another author assuming your overhead does not increase. Clearly, you can play with these numbers with various assumptions and readerships. But, the point is you can scale things down with paid subscribers.

metamet 11y ago

I really enjoy the print version of Popular Science, if you're looking for another.

eevilspock 11y ago

Quality and accountability is what happens when we pay. We've traded quality and accountability for "free" garbage floating in a sea of ads. The NYTimes is still too dependent on advertising. That they consider "native advertising" acceptable shows compromised journalistic principles. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera We call ourselves hackers and innovators. Yet instead of pouring our energies into figuring alternative business models and micropayment solutions, we spend our energies on more ways to capture users in viral schemes and then collect their data for sale to advertisers. As I wrote the other day: Where are our backbones to stand up against selling out the internet so that we can get rich quick? Because that is what the advertising business model is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? The saddest thing about Hacker News is that we all get behind radical things like FOSS (Bill Gates called it un-American) and Snowden, and fight SOPA and NSA violations of privacy, but because too many of our salaries depend on advertising revenue, our cognitive dissonance blinders go up lightning fast.

ska 11y ago
Quality and accountability is what happens when we pay. This may plausibly be necessary, but it certainly isn't sufficient.
icebraining 11y ago
I'd say you overestimate the number of people working on ad-supported software. Many, if not most of us are working on for-pay software and services. The reason I'm ambivalent about ads is not because it funds my paycheck (it doesn't, we charge for our services), but because for all their evils, ads work as a kind of enforced redistribution mechanism, and since geographic adjustments of prices work poorly on the web, I fear that any kind of payment system will inevitably lead to prices being set at the US middle class income level, shutting out everyone with a lower income level. I know can afford to pay for stuff, and I'm happy to do it, but that's only been true since I started working, and only because I'm lucky enough to have a decent job. I suppose "we'll figure it out" is one answer, but I'm afraid I can't put my heart behind a proposal that would have left my teenager self closed off from most of the web.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Imagine a world, pre-internet, where almost all books are handed out free, but with their pages loaded with ads, and their stories embedded with "native" ads and product placements. Imagine that book "stores" get a cut of the ad revenue and so are incented to stock and push whatever book titles "clicked" the most and contained the most ads? Authors in this world would say they have no choice, because readers will always choose the free book over the $10 or even $5 book. The bookstores only stock the free books for the same reason. In that world you would make exactly the same argument that you just made to me. I'm glad you work on non ad-supported software. But look at it from a consumption, share of revenue and availability perspective: ad supported software is eating the web.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    And in that world, I would have been able to read a lot of books that I wish I could have when I was growing up, when I only got 3-4 books per year, plus access to a poorly stocked library. Would I have traded? Yes, I probably would have. --- I also don't agree that one must oppose all advertising or none; we can oppose native ads and personal tracking without being necessarily opposed to well demarcated side ads.

IndianAstronaut 11y ago

One thing I enjoy about it is the audio edition. It is done well and allows me to enjoy the Economist on the go without sinking too much time into it.

mikestew 11y ago
Thanks for the reminder that I need to start using that on the way to work instead of the usual NPR or fluffy podcast. What little I've listened to it, it is quality, I just forget that I have it.