7 ms·

I welcome alternative business models. The current trend is destroying quality news organizations and leaving consumers wanting. Another option is the pay what

I welcome alternative business models. The current trend is destroying quality news organizations and leaving consumers wanting. Another option is the pay what you want model. This would be a lot easier to implement and would eliminate the possible backlash. This morning I investigated the WSJ. After the intro period discount expires it's about $400 a year - a lot more than it's worth to me. Instead of getting $100 or even $200 from me they get nothing. Pay by the article services like Blendle show promise, but they really need to work on the interface.

matt4077 10y ago
Pay-By-Article is, I believed, feared by publishers and journalists because they see how often the number of clicks and comments diverges from the perceived importance of stories. Once pay-by-article is the driving force of everything, it will be incredibly hard for these organisations to resist the urge to cheat here and there. Send a writer and a photographer to Tajikistan for two months to report on the election? For the same price, you can get 120 "analysis" pieces on the effect of social media in the presidential election. Instead, I'd be happy to see "casual" online subscriptions: I believe there's many people like me who read lots of sources at medium depth. There should be a range of the number of monthly article views (anywhere from 30 to 200 I would say) where the publication is important enough for a reader to commit to spending some money, but not important enough to warrant a full subscription. Ideally, the publishers would band together and create an actual "netflix of news" with such packages for the top-50+ publications worldwide. There must be a huge untapped market of avid news consumers currently underserved by the market. Why hasn't it happened? I can only guess that the publishers are weary of relinquishing the reader relationship to any middleman. I think we're approaching the point where they'll either have to do it themselves, or these behemoths (google, fb, Apple) will do it for them.
- mistermann 10y ago
  This idea is great, provided they get together and support one subscription spanning numerous publications. I'd like to read some of The Economist, Harper's, Vanity Fair, etc but am not interested enough to buy a full subscription. If they don't do something like this, it might be the end of them. The internet is good in so many ways, but it also causes a lot of problems.
  - intended 10y ago
    Its already the end of them. The WSJ, venerable and Wall street lauded (as in everyone reads it), got bought by Murdoch's empire. And Murdoch largely manages to support his empire by selling attention grabbing material. Its long since over. Buying individual articles will be another nail in the coffin - the internet has provided competitive advantage to people focusing on hacking click and attention. The best way to do this is to play to the gallery and the human hind brain. People act more frequently on their emotions than they act on their reason. ---- Worse - people are already building products and apps that use behavioral/skinnerian reward schemas to keep people engaged. So all the high minded discussion is redundant - the NYT cannot write an article which competes with attention heroin.
    - ENGNR 10y ago
      People do make the conscious decision to consume more wholesome experiences than heroin every day though, even if heroin was in front of them next to their food/drink/work day. NYT has already carved out a profitable niche selling access to plain old long form journalism, it's one of the few success stories
      - intended 10y ago
        Thats if people know they are imbibing heroin. I dont think half the people on HN itself are aware that most mobile games are designed and sold as differently themed skinner boxes. What hope do normal people have to even be aware? And That's something ubiquitous and only recently being questioned and condemned by people in the industry. Awareness of the pitfalls of simple apps is an issue. Forget the really insidious stuff being made by people with the intention to deceive and manipulate. ------ Holding up NYT as a survivor is telling. The websites and newspapers that remain today are a small fraction of the Print Media industry which was thriving in 1985. Holding these few existences as successes, ignores the huge survivorship bias baked into the example. NYT was already a massive name, and worked very very hard to adapt to the new medium. It was one of the few magazines which attempted - very early on - to build interesting HTML/multi media articles. They tried making subscriptions work, a move widely derided at the time as a sure shot to failure. (if people forget, once upon a time subscriptions and pay walls were considered sure shots to failure on the web). The powers and membership of the fourth estate has been vastly eroded, and the ability of people to get past a persons defences, or to build an echo chamber has been significantly enhanced. The recent American elections were a low throughput event, but it showed how simply tweeting allows someone to significantly take advantage of (a particular) group think.
- edblarney 10y ago
  This problem already exist. Most news orgs are ad-driven, ergo, their revenue essentially is 'pay per click' already.
criddell 10y ago
If a little more than $1 / day is too much, what would a really good news service be worth to you? Wired had a pretty good article last week about the NYT's strategy that you might find interesting: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journalism/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journal...
- nostrebored 10y ago
  "A really good news service" is not what anyone wants in the information age. I want to read the best articles from the best news sources. If there were an Oracle that could find that for me, without extreme political bias, I would happily pay $1 a day.
  - criddell 10y ago
    The oracle is the publishing editor at the each news service. If you look on NYT.com for example, they carry their articles, Reuters, Associated Press, etc...
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I am a longtime WSJ and Economist subscriber. My parents have been subscribers for decades (we used to also subscribe to SJ Mercury back in the day, and get the local town papers as well). I read about 5 articles a day on the WSJ app and website, every day. It's one of the first and last things I do each day. But honestly the frequency of "big news must know" news items is pretty low, and there's a decent amount of news recycling or articles on a subject covered the day before but with minor updates. In terms of value, I can totally understand if people balk at $400/yr. Personally I think in terms of "news around the world affairs you can't miss", the Economist is much better than the Journal.
Fej 10y ago
Pay-by-article would be the death of journalism. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Everything would be clickbait.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  One could argue that we're nearly there already. There still are a few places where you can read semi-sane journalism, but for the most part the action is on the likes of Buzzfeed or Business Insider, which are an endless stream of clickbait, sensationalism, and poorly sourced rumor mongering, with the occasional fake news thrown in for good measure.

matt4077 10y ago

Pay-By-Article is, I believed, feared by publishers and journalists because they see how often the number of clicks and comments diverges from the perceived importance of stories. Once pay-by-article is the driving force of everything, it will be incredibly hard for these organisations to resist the urge to cheat here and there. Send a writer and a photographer to Tajikistan for two months to report on the election? For the same price, you can get 120 "analysis" pieces on the effect of social media in the presidential election. Instead, I'd be happy to see "casual" online subscriptions: I believe there's many people like me who read lots of sources at medium depth. There should be a range of the number of monthly article views (anywhere from 30 to 200 I would say) where the publication is important enough for a reader to commit to spending some money, but not important enough to warrant a full subscription. Ideally, the publishers would band together and create an actual "netflix of news" with such packages for the top-50+ publications worldwide. There must be a huge untapped market of avid news consumers currently underserved by the market. Why hasn't it happened? I can only guess that the publishers are weary of relinquishing the reader relationship to any middleman. I think we're approaching the point where they'll either have to do it themselves, or these behemoths (google, fb, Apple) will do it for them.

mistermann 10y ago
This idea is great, provided they get together and support one subscription spanning numerous publications. I'd like to read some of The Economist, Harper's, Vanity Fair, etc but am not interested enough to buy a full subscription. If they don't do something like this, it might be the end of them. The internet is good in so many ways, but it also causes a lot of problems.
- intended 10y ago
  Its already the end of them. The WSJ, venerable and Wall street lauded (as in everyone reads it), got bought by Murdoch's empire. And Murdoch largely manages to support his empire by selling attention grabbing material. Its long since over. Buying individual articles will be another nail in the coffin - the internet has provided competitive advantage to people focusing on hacking click and attention. The best way to do this is to play to the gallery and the human hind brain. People act more frequently on their emotions than they act on their reason. ---- Worse - people are already building products and apps that use behavioral/skinnerian reward schemas to keep people engaged. So all the high minded discussion is redundant - the NYT cannot write an article which competes with attention heroin.
  - ENGNR 10y ago
    People do make the conscious decision to consume more wholesome experiences than heroin every day though, even if heroin was in front of them next to their food/drink/work day. NYT has already carved out a profitable niche selling access to plain old long form journalism, it's one of the few success stories
    - intended 10y ago
      Thats if people know they are imbibing heroin. I dont think half the people on HN itself are aware that most mobile games are designed and sold as differently themed skinner boxes. What hope do normal people have to even be aware? And That's something ubiquitous and only recently being questioned and condemned by people in the industry. Awareness of the pitfalls of simple apps is an issue. Forget the really insidious stuff being made by people with the intention to deceive and manipulate. ------ Holding up NYT as a survivor is telling. The websites and newspapers that remain today are a small fraction of the Print Media industry which was thriving in 1985. Holding these few existences as successes, ignores the huge survivorship bias baked into the example. NYT was already a massive name, and worked very very hard to adapt to the new medium. It was one of the few magazines which attempted - very early on - to build interesting HTML/multi media articles. They tried making subscriptions work, a move widely derided at the time as a sure shot to failure. (if people forget, once upon a time subscriptions and pay walls were considered sure shots to failure on the web). The powers and membership of the fourth estate has been vastly eroded, and the ability of people to get past a persons defences, or to build an echo chamber has been significantly enhanced. The recent American elections were a low throughput event, but it showed how simply tweeting allows someone to significantly take advantage of (a particular) group think.
edblarney 10y ago
This problem already exist. Most news orgs are ad-driven, ergo, their revenue essentially is 'pay per click' already.

criddell 10y ago

If a little more than $1 / day is too much, what would a really good news service be worth to you? Wired had a pretty good article last week about the NYT's strategy that you might find interesting: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journalism/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journal...

nostrebored 10y ago
"A really good news service" is not what anyone wants in the information age. I want to read the best articles from the best news sources. If there were an Oracle that could find that for me, without extreme political bias, I would happily pay $1 a day.
- criddell 10y ago
  The oracle is the publishing editor at the each news service. If you look on NYT.com for example, they carry their articles, Reuters, Associated Press, etc...
hkmurakami 10y ago
I am a longtime WSJ and Economist subscriber. My parents have been subscribers for decades (we used to also subscribe to SJ Mercury back in the day, and get the local town papers as well). I read about 5 articles a day on the WSJ app and website, every day. It's one of the first and last things I do each day. But honestly the frequency of "big news must know" news items is pretty low, and there's a decent amount of news recycling or articles on a subject covered the day before but with minor updates. In terms of value, I can totally understand if people balk at $400/yr. Personally I think in terms of "news around the world affairs you can't miss", the Economist is much better than the Journal.

Fej 10y ago

Pay-by-article would be the death of journalism. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Everything would be clickbait.

ddebernardy 10y ago
One could argue that we're nearly there already. There still are a few places where you can read semi-sane journalism, but for the most part the action is on the likes of Buzzfeed or Business Insider, which are an endless stream of clickbait, sensationalism, and poorly sourced rumor mongering, with the occasional fake news thrown in for good measure.