4 ms·

> If your business is solely dependent on tracking scripts, tricking users with clickbait titles and using archaic ads - then you’re destined to fail regardless

> If your business is solely dependent on tracking scripts, tricking users with clickbait titles and using archaic ads - then you’re destined to fail regardless. If that were true, they had 2 decades to fail and they didn't. People like to read the news.

jnty 7y ago
News websites are failing every day. Even Buzzfeed had big layoffs a few months ago. If your revenue model relies on making your website increasingly less user-friendly, it might have kept your head above water for longer than some competitors, but it can't be sustainable.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  The successful newspapers appear to enforce strict paywalls. I pay for the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times because their content and analysis is good and original. (They also have decent events from time to time.) The free-news model almost requires aggressive tracking, which I agree is unsustainable.
- return1 7y ago
  The real reason they are failing is not user-unfriendliness or tracking though. It's the intense competition and the broadening of the publisher base by 1000x with the advent of the internet, and the natural supply-demand adjustment to very low rates of return from advertising. This leads them to increase the advertising load in order to make ends meet, hence using more trackers.
mc32 7y ago
Some news orgs remain despite being unprofitable because they are a billionaire’s pet project. Bezos is one.
jstrong 7y ago
the news business has been in economic free fall for the last two decades. at this point, most local newspapers have already folded. have you heard of Newsweek? print ad revenue (formerly their bread and butter) falls year after year, and online ad revenue is peanuts in comparison.
gnode 7y ago
I'd say they have failed. Many outlets have gone out of business, many are unprofitable and propped up by ulterior interests (e.g. billionaires and nation states wishing to influence narratives). Quality has suffered in many ways. The revenue graph here gives a good overview of how the industry has declined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Crisis
HillRat 7y ago
Yeah, to put it mildly, J. Random Web Developer’s view on the news business is … not helpful. It’s not as if news orgs don’t hate their current monetization models; a quick spin through Poynter would have confirmed that for him, while he probably should be aware that many outlets are focusing on subscriptions, partner content, and so on. But the nature of the web is that the vast majority of consumers are conditioned to have stuff for free, and if they can’t get news from the WSJ they’ll get it from Breitbart, and if they can’t get it from Breitbart they’ll get it from a Romanian teenager running a fake-news clickfarm on Facebook. And that’s without getting into the first- and second-order effects the Web has had on local journalism and newspapers, which have suffered from the twin scourges of the superstar economy (why pay for the Paducha Picayune when I have every national paper at my fingertips?) and the miserable margins of online ads compared to the print ads that used to be their mainstay. The problem is that the ad-supported Internet model hollowed out American journalism, turning it into a howling wasteland of listicles and tracking pixels, and the industry is simply hanging on for dear life at this point. If the OP had some recommendations for a better user experience that wouldn’t essentially kill what remains of the non-top-shelf (NYT, WSJ) or hyper-focused (TPM, Axios) journalism market, I’m all ears, but there’s nothing there that’s helpful.
matt_s 7y ago
That's the thing though, there isn't much reading or depth. The majority of sites are like those cheesy carnival games trying to get people to "step right up" and are just as rigged as the games to try and keep you around, blasting your face with ads.

jnty 7y ago

News websites are failing every day. Even Buzzfeed had big layoffs a few months ago. If your revenue model relies on making your website increasingly less user-friendly, it might have kept your head above water for longer than some competitors, but it can't be sustainable.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
The successful newspapers appear to enforce strict paywalls. I pay for the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times because their content and analysis is good and original. (They also have decent events from time to time.) The free-news model almost requires aggressive tracking, which I agree is unsustainable.
return1 7y ago
The real reason they are failing is not user-unfriendliness or tracking though. It's the intense competition and the broadening of the publisher base by 1000x with the advent of the internet, and the natural supply-demand adjustment to very low rates of return from advertising. This leads them to increase the advertising load in order to make ends meet, hence using more trackers.

mc32 7y ago

Some news orgs remain despite being unprofitable because they are a billionaire’s pet project. Bezos is one.

jstrong 7y ago

the news business has been in economic free fall for the last two decades. at this point, most local newspapers have already folded. have you heard of Newsweek? print ad revenue (formerly their bread and butter) falls year after year, and online ad revenue is peanuts in comparison.

gnode 7y ago

I'd say they have failed. Many outlets have gone out of business, many are unprofitable and propped up by ulterior interests (e.g. billionaires and nation states wishing to influence narratives). Quality has suffered in many ways. The revenue graph here gives a good overview of how the industry has declined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Crisis

HillRat 7y ago

Yeah, to put it mildly, J. Random Web Developer’s view on the news business is … not helpful. It’s not as if news orgs don’t hate their current monetization models; a quick spin through Poynter would have confirmed that for him, while he probably should be aware that many outlets are focusing on subscriptions, partner content, and so on. But the nature of the web is that the vast majority of consumers are conditioned to have stuff for free, and if they can’t get news from the WSJ they’ll get it from Breitbart, and if they can’t get it from Breitbart they’ll get it from a Romanian teenager running a fake-news clickfarm on Facebook. And that’s without getting into the first- and second-order effects the Web has had on local journalism and newspapers, which have suffered from the twin scourges of the superstar economy (why pay for the Paducha Picayune when I have every national paper at my fingertips?) and the miserable margins of online ads compared to the print ads that used to be their mainstay. The problem is that the ad-supported Internet model hollowed out American journalism, turning it into a howling wasteland of listicles and tracking pixels, and the industry is simply hanging on for dear life at this point. If the OP had some recommendations for a better user experience that wouldn’t essentially kill what remains of the non-top-shelf (NYT, WSJ) or hyper-focused (TPM, Axios) journalism market, I’m all ears, but there’s nothing there that’s helpful.

matt_s 7y ago

That's the thing though, there isn't much reading or depth. The majority of sites are like those cheesy carnival games trying to get people to "step right up" and are just as rigged as the games to try and keep you around, blasting your face with ads.