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I think that newspapers are dying due to a lack of good leadership and direction. It's a hard job to do right and theres no incentive for it. Instead we have a

by monksy 6y ago

I think that newspapers are dying due to a lack of good leadership and direction. It's a hard job to do right and theres no incentive for it. Instead we have a bunch of idealists who's dream is to influence people. (But they don't have the experience to understand why their position is misfounded and harmful) [This is where you get vice and other extreme positioned based papers] Anyways, journalism never really caught up on the idea about online news and tried to go the ad revenue route. They didn't innovate and they degraded their product. (Clickbait). Then they tried to put the genie back by doing paywalls. (Expensive and they've been using dark patterns to try to prevent you from cancelling) They've had their chance to understand what the context of their work is and to innovate. But all we're seeing is a profit driven approach with no clear acknowledgement about how people want to interact with them.

tehjoker 6y ago
Iirc, Matt Taibbi said that newspapers are dying because the news never made money. Some of it was subscriptions, but most of it was the classifieds, ads, and other non-news items that were obliterated by the internet. This means that subscription models (like NYT) and media consolidation are the only viable path forward. Subscriptions mean that papers will cater to a wealthy audiance and lock out the poors. Advertising makes news available to the poor, but makes their opinions unrepresented because newspapers can't say anything that would upset their advertisers. Given the news doesn't really make money and is necessary for a functioning society, we might need to look towards public funding and ways to include the public. EDIT: As a side benefit, a publicly funded news agency doesn't need to maximize eyeballs on it and so can afford to be less sensationalist. That is, it can be, but it has no life-or-death obligation to do it.

by monksy 6y ago

tehjoker 6y ago

Iirc, Matt Taibbi said that newspapers are dying because the news never made money. Some of it was subscriptions, but most of it was the classifieds, ads, and other non-news items that were obliterated by the internet. This means that subscription models (like NYT) and media consolidation are the only viable path forward. Subscriptions mean that papers will cater to a wealthy audiance and lock out the poors. Advertising makes news available to the poor, but makes their opinions unrepresented because newspapers can't say anything that would upset their advertisers. Given the news doesn't really make money and is necessary for a functioning society, we might need to look towards public funding and ways to include the public. EDIT: As a side benefit, a publicly funded news agency doesn't need to maximize eyeballs on it and so can afford to be less sensationalist. That is, it can be, but it has no life-or-death obligation to do it.