9 ms·

Those pesky journalists, wanting to get payed! Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream

Those pesky journalists, wanting to get payed! Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream of complains about clickbait and how advertising ruined the media. On the other no one is willing to pay for a more sustainable model.

Kalium 8y ago
I, personally, can and do pay for a reliable and sustainable model. At least one of those is for a Condé Nast property. On days like this I find myself wondering why. For the rest, I think it's something like the Netflix problem. Netflix is great if that's all you ever want to use. However, if what you want is scattered across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, and other video services? Then you might be less sanguine about the situation. The costs add up, at $15 per month per service. Journalism, for all it's absolutely critical importance to freedom, democracy, and our shared hobby, is far more dispersed than that. How many different subscriptions would I need to have to read every article that graces the HN front page every day? At least a dozen, but perhaps more. That's going to add up too. WSJ wants $40/mo, Atlantic $80/yr, Economist is $180/yr, and that's just three. How much do you think each HN reader should be paying monthly for jornalism?
- klingebeil 8y ago
  Good for you. And the answer should be, as with everything else: the amount everybody is willing to pay. I understand your criticism, but what we‘re seeing is the fall out of the disruption of the news industry. The old model (advertising) isn‘t working anymore, so companies are falling back on the subscription model. (Or memberships) And yes they are expensive. But what‘s the alternative?
  - Kalium 8y ago
    What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Right now I'm led to think the answer might be consolidation. Or some other form of subscription intermediation. A dozen outlets is far more than I want to manage, especially when the price really has little correlation to how often I actually read an article from an outlet. That buying a subscription doesn't make ads go away is also not helping. I do not want to pay to support something so I can be the subject of behavioral targeting, thanks. With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I refuse to accept that democracy can only survive at the price of listicles and privacy-invading ads.
    - klingebeil 8y ago
      > What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Again. That‘s their choice and that‘s totally fine in my book. But journalism is a business and no business survives on people not willing to pay. I completely agree that behavioral targeting can die a premature death and I‘d love to go back to models based on local, contextual or brand-driven advertising. > With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I think we‘re on the same page here. And again that‘s totally fine for you to make this decision. Media companies need to find a sustainable model. At the moment it looks like subscriptions and paywalls are the way to got. Maybe that‘ll change again, but I wouldn't count on it, tbh.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        > Again. That‘s their choice and that‘s totally fine in my book. But journalism is a business and no business survives on people not willing to pay. You're completely right - business needs revenue. What I'm pointing to here is that the way subscriptions are structured and priced doesn't match the way media is consumed. It's like if beer was only available in kegs or in free samples, because nobody had hit on any other approach. It's a sign that the assumptions about user behavior no longer hold. I mean, I understand that newspapers with print editions often rely on those regular subscribers to the dead-tree ones. But it seems weird to base your business model around assuming that the internet is not different.
        klingebeil 8y ago
        News media does not operate at the scale of Netflix or Spotify, etc. Spotify has about 87 million paying users, Netflix around 150 million. The New York Times has around 4 million. That‘s a huge difference in scale alone. And the NYT is the exception, not the rule. Journalism is expensive. Really expensive, if you want quality. More so, if you want some great investigative reporting. So, yes subscriptions are mostly structured around the needs of the media company, not the needs of the consumer. No one is assuming, the "internet" is different. The economics of journalism just don‘t care.
- basch 8y ago
  Both journalism and video could be fixed with the same solution. 1) a standard oauth2 login system. One identity I can use to sign into all my streaming platforms. 1b) mint/manilla like management tools from the account provider for keeping track of subscriptions, bills, and what you are actually paying for. 2.5) something that can deduplicate when you are paying for the same content twice. It's very easy to end up paying 2 or 3 times for access to the same streams, whether they be viacom or fox or nbc. Once I pay for the rights to a library, I should be exempt from paying a second service again. Its very hard to see overlap, when youve signed up for access to the same libraries through multiple providers. 3) a rss/pubsub like standard for feeding video to a video player. Sure if I want to navigate to the Netflix app to see the netflix experience for browsing video, I can, but I should also be able to click videos and see all the videos I pay for across all services, in any library browser I choose. Roku and Apple TV, and to some extent Amazon, have all somewhat recreated this experience for the user through sheer force, but it requires streaming platforms to be compatible with Roku and Apple and Amazons way of doing things. It's not an industry standard for 1) tracking licensing access 2) providing authenticated access to raw video. Anyone should be able to write a video player interface that can automatically interface with compatible video providers. Just like web browsers and websites. And to the same extent, until paying, tracking, and access to journalism follows some kind of open standard, its just too hard to pay for access to tons of articles from a ton of providers. Ill gladly pay a la cart or through usage (not when I open a tab, but after i finish at least half an article?) And I know these kind of startups exist, but they are still proprietary, they arent a technology built right into the browser and and into each news platform. I should be able to prove I pay for a news site, and get the content, without the site caring what browser/librarymanager I am using. In essence, the frontend newsreader/videoplayer should be completely decoupled from the backend content provider infrastructure, and both ends should be infinitely interchangable and compatible.
  - TylerH 8y ago
    That will never happen in a capitalist system
    - basch 8y ago
everdrive 8y ago
Agreed. More people should just pay for a magazine or paper subscription. I pay money for an editorial magazine. Next year I'll probably do the same for a different publication. News online is clickbait garbage, and even when it's not, it's fill with ads and trackers. The solution for consumers is to ignore the temptation of "free" information, and pay for quality writing.

Kalium 8y ago

I, personally, can and do pay for a reliable and sustainable model. At least one of those is for a Condé Nast property. On days like this I find myself wondering why. For the rest, I think it's something like the Netflix problem. Netflix is great if that's all you ever want to use. However, if what you want is scattered across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, and other video services? Then you might be less sanguine about the situation. The costs add up, at $15 per month per service. Journalism, for all it's absolutely critical importance to freedom, democracy, and our shared hobby, is far more dispersed than that. How many different subscriptions would I need to have to read every article that graces the HN front page every day? At least a dozen, but perhaps more. That's going to add up too. WSJ wants $40/mo, Atlantic $80/yr, Economist is $180/yr, and that's just three. How much do you think each HN reader should be paying monthly for jornalism?

klingebeil 8y ago
Good for you. And the answer should be, as with everything else: the amount everybody is willing to pay. I understand your criticism, but what we‘re seeing is the fall out of the disruption of the news industry. The old model (advertising) isn‘t working anymore, so companies are falling back on the subscription model. (Or memberships) And yes they are expensive. But what‘s the alternative?
- Kalium 8y ago
  What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Right now I'm led to think the answer might be consolidation. Or some other form of subscription intermediation. A dozen outlets is far more than I want to manage, especially when the price really has little correlation to how often I actually read an article from an outlet. That buying a subscription doesn't make ads go away is also not helping. I do not want to pay to support something so I can be the subject of behavioral targeting, thanks. With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I refuse to accept that democracy can only survive at the price of listicles and privacy-invading ads.
  - klingebeil 8y ago
    > What I think you're seeing is that people are paying the amount they're willing to pay. When your choices are $40/mo or $0/mo for the WSJ and you average an article or two from them a week, a lot of people will opt for $0. Again. That‘s their choice and that‘s totally fine in my book. But journalism is a business and no business survives on people not willing to pay. I completely agree that behavioral targeting can die a premature death and I‘d love to go back to models based on local, contextual or brand-driven advertising. > With all that said, I do want to address one underlying point. "What's the alternative?", you ask. That's not my problem. That's your problem as a media professional. As a media consumer, I'm perfectly happy to watch the vast majority of media outlets dry up and blow away because they never figured out how to respect the people they purport to serve. I'll stick with the ones that provide me with value I find reasonable and treat me with a measure of respect. I think we‘re on the same page here. And again that‘s totally fine for you to make this decision. Media companies need to find a sustainable model. At the moment it looks like subscriptions and paywalls are the way to got. Maybe that‘ll change again, but I wouldn't count on it, tbh.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      > Again. That‘s their choice and that‘s totally fine in my book. But journalism is a business and no business survives on people not willing to pay. You're completely right - business needs revenue. What I'm pointing to here is that the way subscriptions are structured and priced doesn't match the way media is consumed. It's like if beer was only available in kegs or in free samples, because nobody had hit on any other approach. It's a sign that the assumptions about user behavior no longer hold. I mean, I understand that newspapers with print editions often rely on those regular subscribers to the dead-tree ones. But it seems weird to base your business model around assuming that the internet is not different.
      - klingebeil 8y ago
        News media does not operate at the scale of Netflix or Spotify, etc. Spotify has about 87 million paying users, Netflix around 150 million. The New York Times has around 4 million. That‘s a huge difference in scale alone. And the NYT is the exception, not the rule. Journalism is expensive. Really expensive, if you want quality. More so, if you want some great investigative reporting. So, yes subscriptions are mostly structured around the needs of the media company, not the needs of the consumer. No one is assuming, the "internet" is different. The economics of journalism just don‘t care.
basch 8y ago
Both journalism and video could be fixed with the same solution. 1) a standard oauth2 login system. One identity I can use to sign into all my streaming platforms. 1b) mint/manilla like management tools from the account provider for keeping track of subscriptions, bills, and what you are actually paying for. 2.5) something that can deduplicate when you are paying for the same content twice. It's very easy to end up paying 2 or 3 times for access to the same streams, whether they be viacom or fox or nbc. Once I pay for the rights to a library, I should be exempt from paying a second service again. Its very hard to see overlap, when youve signed up for access to the same libraries through multiple providers. 3) a rss/pubsub like standard for feeding video to a video player. Sure if I want to navigate to the Netflix app to see the netflix experience for browsing video, I can, but I should also be able to click videos and see all the videos I pay for across all services, in any library browser I choose. Roku and Apple TV, and to some extent Amazon, have all somewhat recreated this experience for the user through sheer force, but it requires streaming platforms to be compatible with Roku and Apple and Amazons way of doing things. It's not an industry standard for 1) tracking licensing access 2) providing authenticated access to raw video. Anyone should be able to write a video player interface that can automatically interface with compatible video providers. Just like web browsers and websites. And to the same extent, until paying, tracking, and access to journalism follows some kind of open standard, its just too hard to pay for access to tons of articles from a ton of providers. Ill gladly pay a la cart or through usage (not when I open a tab, but after i finish at least half an article?) And I know these kind of startups exist, but they are still proprietary, they arent a technology built right into the browser and and into each news platform. I should be able to prove I pay for a news site, and get the content, without the site caring what browser/librarymanager I am using. In essence, the frontend newsreader/videoplayer should be completely decoupled from the backend content provider infrastructure, and both ends should be infinitely interchangable and compatible.
- TylerH 8y ago
  That will never happen in a capitalist system
  - basch 8y ago

everdrive 8y ago

Agreed. More people should just pay for a magazine or paper subscription. I pay money for an editorial magazine. Next year I'll probably do the same for a different publication. News online is clickbait garbage, and even when it's not, it's fill with ads and trackers. The solution for consumers is to ignore the temptation of "free" information, and pay for quality writing.