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Watching this very closely, I pay for a WSJ subscription because I think their content is better than most, and also because I get sent alot of links to their c
by chollida1 9y ago
Watching this very closely, I pay for a WSJ subscription because I think their content is better than most, and also because I get sent alot of links to their content.
Something about this later point feels like the argument people make about using Office because people still send them Excel and Word docs.
Similar to how software companies release free software to augment what makes them money, Bloomberg is able to spend a lot of money on producing content that is sponsored by their terminal subscriptions.
The WSJ might be in a unique situation where their primary audience will pay, often due to companies footing the bill for employee's, so perhaps they can be one of the few news producing companies that doesn't have to depend on Google for traffic in that their primary audience loads up their front page multiple times a day just to see what's there.
I wouldn't be surprised if they did a deal with Bloomberg to provide their content on terminals to further strengthen their ties to their core audience.
- Simulacra 9y agoThat's a really good point. Maybe the future of news survival is to pair it with a company that makes money, to support the journalism. Then again I feel like that's how we got CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc. Maybe not a great idea. I really like Blomberg and to some extent WSJ. I hope they can maintain their integrity.
- austenallred 9y ago> Maybe the future of news survival is to pair it with a company that makes money, to support the journalism To be honest, that's the past and present of most news as well. Newspapers would have never been around based on advertising alone. The fee usually paid for printing and sending, and classifieds made up the bulk of the revenue. Now that they're decoupled and both news and classifieds are pretty much free, it's no wonder that news is struggling. Hard news has (almost) never been a wildly profitable endeavor in and of itself.
- zanny 9y agoThe future of news survival is independent journalists being funded by people who care to have an unbiased investigative news media. No idea how we get there, though. You basically need to persuade those who understand how critical journalism is to freedom to care to fund it, and to have a centralized platform to fund journalism that itself is not corruptible by monied interests trying to push propaganda.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago> have a centralized platform to fund journalism that itself is not corruptible by monied interests trying to push propaganda Why is a centralized platform necessary? Why isn't, e.g. Patreon, for individual journalists or individual teams of journalists sufficient?
- criley2 9y agoEh if we had benevolent entities funding journalism at a loss we'd all be far, far better for it. We got Fox/CNN etc because journalism in service to advertisers = clickbait. At this point, I think we can codify this: Journalism + Ad-Supported-Model = Clickbait. Good journalism coming from firms which advertise is by accident. Like a broken clock being right twice a day. I love subscription journalism because you're not playing the clickbait game. There is no future for journalism in ad supported models. Plenty of future for infotainment, heck, infotainment masquerading as journalism might just take it all over, but journalism will certainly not be a part of that fold.
- dredmorbius 9y agoThe Economist does this. EIU is about 1/3 revenues.
- Shivetya 9y agoOrganizations like WSJ should really try to market corporate level packages where specific IP ranges are cleared for free use. Keep it low enough that it does require more than a tier of approval and they could see some real money. I am just surprised that sites don't do this already. Its par for the course with a lot of software, why not news or similar?
- noer 9y agoThe WSJ is owned by Dow Jones & Company, which is profitable.
- creepydata 9y agoIsn't that BuzzFeed's business model?