4 ms·

There's Netflix for television and Spotify for music, so it's almost inevitable there's going to be a "Netflix for journalism." (Even with competitors offering

by pdog 10y ago

There's Netflix for television and Spotify for music, so it's almost inevitable there's going to be a "Netflix for journalism." (Even with competitors offering news supported by advertising for free, it's still a billion dollar market.) But... why would it be the Times? Incumbents have a poor track record of avoiding disruption by ambitious upstarts.

whorleater 10y ago
> Incumbents have a poor track record of avoiding disruption by ambitious upstarts. Because journalism is hard. Actual journalism requires boots on the ground, reporters, photographers, contacts in foreign governments, press infrastructure, etc. Netflix and Spotify didn't start out making music, they started out as a delivery platform for it. The NY Times owns the entire integration, from creation to delivery, which puts them in different position than say, music labels for Spotify or movie studios for Netflix.
owebmaster 10y ago
Facebook & Twitter are the popcorntime of journalism, better then netflix.
f_allwein 10y ago
Well, there is https://www.pressreader.com https://www.pressreader.com , which has the potential to be Netflix for journalism. Would be great if more publishers worked with them.
- svachalek 10y ago
  This looks like Yet Another News Aggregator. Google and Yahoo have had them for years (decades?) among many others. A true game changer would have to be one that people paid money for, and served ultimately to pay for real journalism. That has also been tried many times, with no success that I'm aware of. I don't mind paying for news, but most newspapers charge in the range of $20-$40 a month for digital subscriptions which just seems outrageous to me. I can listen to a bottomless well of music for $10/mo on Spotify, watch a huge catalog of shows and movies on Netflix for roughly $10/mo, or subscribe to a handful of newspapers for $200/mo. Is journalism so, so much more expensive to produce than entertainment?
  - PlaceFan 10y ago
    > Is journalism so, so much more expensive to produce than entertainment? There's a temporal component here that's much more important for journalism than it is for those other two forms of entertainment. For example, The Shawshank Redemption was made 23 years ago and is still a fantastic movie: People will still pay to watch that movie. In contrast, very few people will pay money to read a news article from even two days ago (let alone 23 years ago). Sony could never produce another movie again and have a sizable revenue stream just from distribution rights on their existing film catalog. The NYT can't really do that, the demand for old news articles just isn't that great. The equivalent of a news subscription then isn't really Netflix or Spotify: It's going to the movies, or going to a concert, or buying an album. All of which are notoriously considered to be expensive affairs. I'd even go so far as to say the NYT would probably absolutely let you read older articles for cheap (a few $ a month), but the demand for that is non-existent so it's silly to even offer.
  - f_allwein 10y ago
    Oh dear - just realized pressreader does not make it clear at all what they do on their website. They give online access to 5.000 print publications from all over the world and charge either per single issue (0.99£ in my case), or 29.99£ per month to access all of it. So it seems to be pretty close to what you are looking for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressReader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressReader Downside: A lot of the publications are insignificant/ very similar to each other. They do have some good ones like the Guardian, but I'm still missing some personal favourites, so haven't joined yet.
eternalban 10y ago
Because NYT actually invested in building an ecommerce system for the publishing vertical.
snowwrestler 10y ago
There is already a Netflix for journalism: it's called Facebook. Like Netflix, they do not produce content, but have amassed a huge, loyal audience by doing a great job of aggregating and distributing it. Netflix eventually realized that it would get cut out of the distribution business--that's why they started making their own content. So far, Facebook shows no interest in making their own news content, probably because news companies show no sign that they are capable of beating Facebook at anything.

by pdog 10y ago

whorleater 10y ago

> Incumbents have a poor track record of avoiding disruption by ambitious upstarts. Because journalism is hard. Actual journalism requires boots on the ground, reporters, photographers, contacts in foreign governments, press infrastructure, etc. Netflix and Spotify didn't start out making music, they started out as a delivery platform for it. The NY Times owns the entire integration, from creation to delivery, which puts them in different position than say, music labels for Spotify or movie studios for Netflix.

owebmaster 10y ago

Facebook & Twitter are the popcorntime of journalism, better then netflix.

f_allwein 10y ago

Well, there is https://www.pressreader.com https://www.pressreader.com , which has the potential to be Netflix for journalism. Would be great if more publishers worked with them.

svachalek 10y ago
This looks like Yet Another News Aggregator. Google and Yahoo have had them for years (decades?) among many others. A true game changer would have to be one that people paid money for, and served ultimately to pay for real journalism. That has also been tried many times, with no success that I'm aware of. I don't mind paying for news, but most newspapers charge in the range of $20-$40 a month for digital subscriptions which just seems outrageous to me. I can listen to a bottomless well of music for $10/mo on Spotify, watch a huge catalog of shows and movies on Netflix for roughly $10/mo, or subscribe to a handful of newspapers for $200/mo. Is journalism so, so much more expensive to produce than entertainment?
- PlaceFan 10y ago
  > Is journalism so, so much more expensive to produce than entertainment? There's a temporal component here that's much more important for journalism than it is for those other two forms of entertainment. For example, The Shawshank Redemption was made 23 years ago and is still a fantastic movie: People will still pay to watch that movie. In contrast, very few people will pay money to read a news article from even two days ago (let alone 23 years ago). Sony could never produce another movie again and have a sizable revenue stream just from distribution rights on their existing film catalog. The NYT can't really do that, the demand for old news articles just isn't that great. The equivalent of a news subscription then isn't really Netflix or Spotify: It's going to the movies, or going to a concert, or buying an album. All of which are notoriously considered to be expensive affairs. I'd even go so far as to say the NYT would probably absolutely let you read older articles for cheap (a few $ a month), but the demand for that is non-existent so it's silly to even offer.
- f_allwein 10y ago
  Oh dear - just realized pressreader does not make it clear at all what they do on their website. They give online access to 5.000 print publications from all over the world and charge either per single issue (0.99£ in my case), or 29.99£ per month to access all of it. So it seems to be pretty close to what you are looking for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressReader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressReader Downside: A lot of the publications are insignificant/ very similar to each other. They do have some good ones like the Guardian, but I'm still missing some personal favourites, so haven't joined yet.

eternalban 10y ago

Because NYT actually invested in building an ecommerce system for the publishing vertical.

snowwrestler 10y ago

There is already a Netflix for journalism: it's called Facebook. Like Netflix, they do not produce content, but have amassed a huge, loyal audience by doing a great job of aggregating and distributing it. Netflix eventually realized that it would get cut out of the distribution business--that's why they started making their own content. So far, Facebook shows no interest in making their own news content, probably because news companies show no sign that they are capable of beating Facebook at anything.