4 ms·

Has anyone found a way to finance serious news that is both sustainable and open. I fear the subscription model limits the best, 'real' news to the few who can

Has anyone found a way to finance serious news that is both sustainable and open. I fear the subscription model limits the best, 'real' news to the few who can and will pay for it, and keeps that news out of the online conversation. EDIT: What about micropayments? (See this comment for more on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13421905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13421905 )

pmyteh 10y ago
Nobody's made micropayments work (yet?). For serious, sustainable and open [edit: and not ad-supported: some are trying to get that to work sustainably for serious news], there are two models out there: The first is traditional public service broadcasting (such as the BBC, or the German ARD). As these are funded by a compulsory public levy, they don't need either advertising or subscriptions, and have no need to exclude using a paywall. This model adapts from television to Internet news very well. The second is something donation-based. Some organisations are trying to fund reporting using either public donations (e.g. Krautreporter), foundation support (e.g. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism), or a mixture (e.g. Correctiv). It's difficult to scale, though.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  > Nobody's made micropayments work (yet?). Blendle [1]? I guess it depends on how you define 'work'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
- kosei 10y ago
  Seems like micropayments would be tough for a newspaper unless it could leverage a massive audience already with credit cards enabled (see iTunes, Amazon, etc). Otherwise the barrier to get customers to enter their payment information would be too high IMO. Seems like news browsing habits are still typically controlled through websites as opposed to apps (anecdotally - I don't have data on this), which also makes it difficult to drive enough users for a micropayments model to work.

pmyteh 10y ago

Nobody's made micropayments work (yet?). For serious, sustainable and open [edit: and not ad-supported: some are trying to get that to work sustainably for serious news], there are two models out there: The first is traditional public service broadcasting (such as the BBC, or the German ARD). As these are funded by a compulsory public levy, they don't need either advertising or subscriptions, and have no need to exclude using a paywall. This model adapts from television to Internet news very well. The second is something donation-based. Some organisations are trying to fund reporting using either public donations (e.g. Krautreporter), foundation support (e.g. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism), or a mixture (e.g. Correctiv). It's difficult to scale, though.

Fnoord 10y ago
> Nobody's made micropayments work (yet?). Blendle [1]? I guess it depends on how you define 'work'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
kosei 10y ago
Seems like micropayments would be tough for a newspaper unless it could leverage a massive audience already with credit cards enabled (see iTunes, Amazon, etc). Otherwise the barrier to get customers to enter their payment information would be too high IMO. Seems like news browsing habits are still typically controlled through websites as opposed to apps (anecdotally - I don't have data on this), which also makes it difficult to drive enough users for a micropayments model to work.