5 ms·

As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading th

• jmkd 6y ago
  This. Many readers enjoy gaining multiple perspectives on the same news story from which to draw their own conclusions. This behaviour is scarcely catered for today.
  • lowdose 6y ago
    Google News app offers multiple perspectives around news events under a button. Fox, WSJ, CNN and Bloomberg coverage on the last Trump rally.
  • johannes1234321 6y ago
    Really? Isn't that only a small number of people? Most have their trusted news source and come by others only when printed out at Facebook (while their most read only headline and comments and don't click the link) Going back to pre Internet: Even then most people got one newspaper and be done. (I myself grew up with in a household with a daily newspaper and two weekly, in addition to subscriptions to physics and computing magazines, but that was an exception, in most of my friend's places there was at most one) And TV channels there was one news program one watched (and still only few people switch between news channels)
    • ako 6y ago
      Consumption of media has completely changed for me. Most of what i read is through links from others: Hackernews, Flipboard, or facebook, Google news. I think most people get very shallow news information from some big names (nu.nl) that are basically reprints from AP news items. Short discription what happened, no background, nor deep diving. Most websites have the same reprinted stories, nothing worth paying for. For background stories, that require real journalism, you can't rely on just one source. You want the best articles from all sources. Most sources have only a few good deep stories a month. But things have really changed compared to pre-internet: it is much easier to share links to specific news items, and all these links are actually within reach, just click on the link and open it.
      • boplicity 6y ago
        > Most of what i read is through links from others: Hackernews, Flipboard, or facebook, Google news. This is the sea-change that has happened. Newspapers used to be hugely profitable, because they owned and controlled the primary source of news for most people. Their platform – direct distribution directly to people's homes – was immensely powerful for many decades. That platform was disrupted by the internet. Newspapers are no longer the primary platform most people use for media consumption. Those platforms are now, as you say, places like HN, Facebook, Flipboard, Google, etc.
        • johannes1234321 6y ago
          The income they had was through ads. Those revenues now go to Facebook and Google. The retail price covered maybe printing and distribution, but not the content creation. If you go to a facebook stream: how.many different news sites do you really get? - It's few. Most your "friends" have their go-to media they share and random outliers. It feels broad, but I doubt it's broad for the typical user.
  • untog 6y ago
    Many readers enjoy multiple perspectives but I would argue that it’s not the majority of readers at all. Newspaper subscriptions aren’t exactly a new idea, after all: people were very happy receiving one news source daily. And it seems like a lot of people still are. I don’t think this is a good thing. We’d all benefit from seeing multiple perspectives on the news. But to solve this problem you’re going to have to persuade companies that have no interest in sharing their audience and convince an audience that, by and large, doesn’t have a big interest in reading multiple sources of news. It wouldn’t be easy.
• anentropic 6y ago
  > I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify this is a bizarre analogy no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    No one had to limit themselves to one news source before either, but that's what publishers are trying to do now.
    • watwut 6y ago
      There is literally no publisher that would be able or trying to prevent you from reading other publishers. What they want is for you to come back to them, but you can read others too.
      • ako 6y ago
        Publishers know you have a limited budget you’re willing to spend on news articles. If you spend it all with through the purchase of a bundle, you’re less likely to spend it on other publishers.
    • rob74 6y ago
      No... but I assume even in the pre-digital days most people only ever had one, at most two, newspaper subscriptions. And the newspaper (er, news website) publishers are still living in that world.
      • sswezey 6y ago
        But you also had the option to go out and buy the day's newspaper yourself. Maybe I don't want a subscription, but you can't buy a "day pass" online for like $2 either. Sure that's about half a weekly subscription to the NYTimes, but I don't have to commit (and have to remember to cancel) a subscription.
  • albumsrexp 6y ago
• munificent 6y ago
  > I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify This is perhaps a better analogy than you realize, but not for the reason you realize. Yes, Spotify is great for music consumers, but it is profoundly destroying the well-being of music producers. Of course, the big-money days of the 90s are never coming back, but I hope most people would agree that talented musicians should be able to earn a living wage from their art so that they can focus most of their time on it. That's a net benefit to society. But Spotify returns so little money to the artists you conveniently stream that music is inexorably turning into a hobby for all but a tiny fraction of pop stars. Unless you want 99% of journalists to be hobbyists doing it in their free time when they aren't serving people coffee at the nearby Starbucks, then Spotify's isn't the business model to advocate.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• pcmaffey 6y ago
  How do you identify "the best news" without exorbitantly wasting time filtering through rubbish? By trusting in a publisher. In which case, you then become a loyal reader, just like you become a fan of a band. Of course, this is not an exclusive relationship.
  • ako 6y ago
    No, a publisher will always tell they have the best news, but that is not possible as they can only employ a limited number of journalists. And usually they have a certain way of looking at the world and filtering their stories and reporting to this way of looking at the world. If you want to best news, you need to look across different sources, and get recommendations from different sides, e.g. something like but not limited to hackernews.
• boplicity 6y ago
  Why re-think what is already working? Because it will give us the ability to reach new customers? That, unfortunately, doesn't add up. Many low-value customers is not what we need. We need (and have) predictable revenue from stable base of customers we know and trust. (And who trust us.) We need (and have) reliable sources for new long-term customers. We don't need lots of (random) people paying us $1 or $2 every couple of months. Frankly, that sounds like an awful business to be in.
  • bryan_w 6y ago
    > We need (and have) reliable sources for new long-term customers. You may need to elaborate on this. Where are your new long term customers coming from?
• rapind 6y ago
  I'm interested in reading thoughtful, truthful pieces, and I'll pay for it, and I'll keep coming back (loyal). I'm absolutely not interested in trying to verify the authenticity / authority of unfamiliar publications every day / week. While I don't limit myself to just one band, I also prefer a real DJ to spotify, for so many reasons. I'm probably just getting old though. Basically, I'll pay for expertise in these areas.