4 ms·

I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism

by chm 10y ago

I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions. EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netflix, implying similarity and not identity. I can also see the potential problems concerning Net Neutrality, but I don't think it has to be a problem. If done properly, no throttling is needed as the news sites can still serve ads to non-paying customers. You're just distributing your money in 1 place instead of 10. It's solely for convenience.

malchow 10y ago
ISP idea == very interesting !
- chm 10y ago
  I actually had an Ask HN[1] with this question but it went completely under the radar. I was hoping for some good discussion! [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
morgante 10y ago
For one thing because it would almost certainly not work economically. More importantly, that would be a major blow to net neutrality. I really don't want my ISP to be negotiating deals of what news I'm able to access.
aczerepinski 10y ago
Probably for the same economic reasons that Netflix isn't actually what you're implying it is. I keep a Netflix subscription because I enjoy their original content, but still pay a la carte to rent actual movies elsewhere.
nradov 10y ago
ISPs probably wouldn't get enough customer adoption of such a service to make it worth their while. Someone needs to resurrect micropayments and figure out a way to make them work. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily want to subscribe to a news site but would be willing to pay a few pennies to read individual articles.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  "Resurrect"? I don't recall any time period in which micropayments were successful.
  - Intermernet 10y ago
    Not in the west, but they're very successful in developing nations. Africa being the primary example.
jarjoura 10y ago
Isn't this Google News, Facebook Instant Articles, and now Apple News? They all ofter a ranked service that also happens to remove the visual clutter in exchange for guaranteeing eyeballs. Articles probably make less money per person, but it's less customer hostile and I bet in the end makes these original content creators more money.
jallmann 10y ago
> why doesn't the "netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP There are many, many reasons. One somewhat pedantic difference is Netflix deals with evergreen content. Any bundling of print journalism (especially with ISPs involved) is going to look closer to cable company bundling. Personally, infrastructure providers should not be in the business of selling content. I won't rehash those arguments here. So, the ISP aside, the question becomes, who should you pay for a subscription to print journalism? Note that you already pay separately for a Netflix subscription; there would be no difference here. Content is already bundled at the site level, eg a NYT sub gets you all the NYT articles. If we were to go up another level, eg buying a combined sub to NYT + WaPo + WSJ + Buzzfeed + HuffPo + <tabloid-blog> + etc -- then people would be complaining about the opposite, paying for content that they never read. Which is effectively the complaint that many people have with cable television. The open question for these sites is is whether lower per-subscriber revenue, from a third-party bundling service, would altogether be greater than trying to solicit subscriptions on an individual basis. That might be the case, but sites also certainly don't want to straitjacket themselves in the manner of HBO, where bundling is their only form of allowable distribution. Note that most cable networks would never be viable with an a-la carte model: it is only through massive bundling across millions of users that the smaller networks can achieve enough revenue. And not everybody can be HBO. That effectively rules out micropayments for most sites, and I still have my doubts that micropayments would even be feasible at the scale of the WSJ.
eric_h 10y ago
> why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Blendle (blendle.com) seems like it's aiming to be that
SilasX 10y ago
I think the ISP bit is an unnecessary and distracting part, but the general idea is good, I think, for everyone to pay a fixed amount to get access to all content, and then the creators' slice of the payments is determined by what people are actually actually looking at. That way, no one has to think about whether a given article is worth it, nor sign up for every service individually. Jaron Lanier promoted that same basic scheme in You Are Not a Machine (2010). It would also eliminate much of the incentive to bypassing paywalls.
deelowe 10y ago
Well, for one, they have fought new media tooth and nail every step of the way. Look what they did when Google started to index their stuff.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
The ISP I use in Australia, Internode, re-streams a lot / most of di.fm's streaming radio channels at 256kb - so equivalent quality to paid membership of di.fm. They're not the cheapest ISP, but with the NBN rollout (FTTH) differences between ISPs are disappearing. I continue to use Internode almost solely because they provide a service I want. I've never heard anyone claim this is a net-neutrality issue. If ISPs provided bundled premium / membership access to other sites I'd see that as a differentiating factor not a net-neutrality issue. So long as they weren't intentionally throttling other services, but they we would expect their bundled services to have higher QoS priority otherwise we'd complain the 'free' content was shoddy. Personally, I view the whole net neutrality saga as a restriction on the freedom to enter in to contracts. But I'd probably change my mind as soon as it affected me personally. Biases hey.

by chm 10y ago

malchow 10y ago

ISP idea == very interesting !

chm 10y ago
I actually had an Ask HN[1] with this question but it went completely under the radar. I was hoping for some good discussion! [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

morgante 10y ago

For one thing because it would almost certainly not work economically. More importantly, that would be a major blow to net neutrality. I really don't want my ISP to be negotiating deals of what news I'm able to access.

aczerepinski 10y ago

Probably for the same economic reasons that Netflix isn't actually what you're implying it is. I keep a Netflix subscription because I enjoy their original content, but still pay a la carte to rent actual movies elsewhere.

nradov 10y ago

ISPs probably wouldn't get enough customer adoption of such a service to make it worth their while. Someone needs to resurrect micropayments and figure out a way to make them work. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily want to subscribe to a news site but would be willing to pay a few pennies to read individual articles.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
"Resurrect"? I don't recall any time period in which micropayments were successful.
- Intermernet 10y ago
  Not in the west, but they're very successful in developing nations. Africa being the primary example.

jarjoura 10y ago

Isn't this Google News, Facebook Instant Articles, and now Apple News? They all ofter a ranked service that also happens to remove the visual clutter in exchange for guaranteeing eyeballs. Articles probably make less money per person, but it's less customer hostile and I bet in the end makes these original content creators more money.

jallmann 10y ago

> why doesn't the "netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP There are many, many reasons. One somewhat pedantic difference is Netflix deals with evergreen content. Any bundling of print journalism (especially with ISPs involved) is going to look closer to cable company bundling. Personally, infrastructure providers should not be in the business of selling content. I won't rehash those arguments here. So, the ISP aside, the question becomes, who should you pay for a subscription to print journalism? Note that you already pay separately for a Netflix subscription; there would be no difference here. Content is already bundled at the site level, eg a NYT sub gets you all the NYT articles. If we were to go up another level, eg buying a combined sub to NYT + WaPo + WSJ + Buzzfeed + HuffPo + <tabloid-blog> + etc -- then people would be complaining about the opposite, paying for content that they never read. Which is effectively the complaint that many people have with cable television. The open question for these sites is is whether lower per-subscriber revenue, from a third-party bundling service, would altogether be greater than trying to solicit subscriptions on an individual basis. That might be the case, but sites also certainly don't want to straitjacket themselves in the manner of HBO, where bundling is their only form of allowable distribution. Note that most cable networks would never be viable with an a-la carte model: it is only through massive bundling across millions of users that the smaller networks can achieve enough revenue. And not everybody can be HBO. That effectively rules out micropayments for most sites, and I still have my doubts that micropayments would even be feasible at the scale of the WSJ.

eric_h 10y ago

> why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Blendle (blendle.com) seems like it's aiming to be that

SilasX 10y ago

I think the ISP bit is an unnecessary and distracting part, but the general idea is good, I think, for everyone to pay a fixed amount to get access to all content, and then the creators' slice of the payments is determined by what people are actually actually looking at. That way, no one has to think about whether a given article is worth it, nor sign up for every service individually. Jaron Lanier promoted that same basic scheme in You Are Not a Machine (2010). It would also eliminate much of the incentive to bypassing paywalls.

deelowe 10y ago

Well, for one, they have fought new media tooth and nail every step of the way. Look what they did when Google started to index their stuff.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

The ISP I use in Australia, Internode, re-streams a lot / most of di.fm's streaming radio channels at 256kb - so equivalent quality to paid membership of di.fm. They're not the cheapest ISP, but with the NBN rollout (FTTH) differences between ISPs are disappearing. I continue to use Internode almost solely because they provide a service I want. I've never heard anyone claim this is a net-neutrality issue. If ISPs provided bundled premium / membership access to other sites I'd see that as a differentiating factor not a net-neutrality issue. So long as they weren't intentionally throttling other services, but they we would expect their bundled services to have higher QoS priority otherwise we'd complain the 'free' content was shoddy. Personally, I view the whole net neutrality saga as a restriction on the freedom to enter in to contracts. But I'd probably change my mind as soon as it affected me personally. Biases hey.