5 ms·

I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus support journalists like Ms Brown. However, a digital subscription to (say) the NYT costs $4.75/week (r

I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus support journalists like Ms Brown. However, a digital subscription to (say) the NYT costs $4.75/week (regular rate), whereas print version costs $10. I can't share it with my family member. It costs so much more to actually deliver a physical newspaper, and printing it costs so much more. With the digital version, I can get targeted advertising, unlike the shotgun approach of print. So why does digital cost so much? Unlike print, I am able to access digital versions of almost any newspaper out there effortlessly. This makes it much easier to browse around and cherry-pick stories from different sources. Having to pay individually for every source is untenable. Why doesn't the newspaper industry work with companies like Google and Facebook to come up with a workable system that rewards journalists appropriately, without gouging readers? For example, I'd be willing to pay, say, $100/year for full access to every (major) newspaper out there. Let Google track my reading and then at the end of the year, divide up this $100 proportionally to the consumption at each of the sources.

chiefalchemist 5y ago
What happens to that model when someone starts reporting at Google, FB, NYT, Wash Post, etc. is tracking your every scroll and click? And does this biz model actually promote higher quality journalism? Anecdotally, it doesn't look that way. I'm not sure what the solution is but giving more powerful to the powerful is not a sustainable route to fixing The Fourth Estate.
throwaway98797 5y ago
Like this? https://www.apple.com/apple-news/ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
- 1024core 5y ago
  Except that I'm not in the Apple walled garden. No Apple devices here.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> It costs so much more to actually deliver a physical newspaper, and printing it costs so much more. [Compared to a digital newspaper distributed over the internet.] It is not obvious that either of these claims is true. What do you think the marginal cost of one printing is? One delivery? Mail delivery is quite literally the paradigm example of something that is expensive if you do it once but essentially free at scale.
ghaff 5y ago
The short answer is that "targeted" (and we know how well that works) or not, digital advertising isn't nearly as lucrative as print advertising was. The old rule of thumb was that subscriptions/newsstand sales paid for the distribution of the physical paper. Advertising paid for everything else. Digital subscriptions obviously don't incur the same physical distribution costs Although a fair bit still exists so long as you're going to have a physical paper and the digital production has its own costs. (Digital plus physical costs more than physical alone.) In any case, how many people who won't pay $100/year for the NYT--plus maybe another $100/year for something like The Economist will pay $100-200/year for a broad-based subscription to a bunch of different pubs?
- cromulent 5y ago
  Yes, For example, nearly all job advertisements used to be in newspapers. Rivers of gold, they were called in the Australian print media. All that revenue is long gone from newspapers.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The collapse of the classifieds--and I'm guessing job adverts around the same time--were the first dagger into US newspaper profitability.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  Economist is almost $200/year for digital-only, after the first year ($94.50 currently).
paulpauper 5y ago
Digital gets you access to the archives
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity, research and education, and political critique that newspaper archives are locked down behind subscription?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    You can probably find libraries with subscriptions. Someone has to pay for it.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      A library with subscriptions has quite a lot of infrastructure to maintain. A digital archive of published newspapers can be maintained by a single worker using off-the-shelf hardware for an annual budget lesser than the salary of a single newspaper exec, or even better a community project like archive.org or Wikimedia Commons who's dedicated to that kind of stuff.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        So who is paying the organization that created the information in the first place? That's the cost. The cost of a local library subscribing to a service is fairly trivial. My tiny local library subscribes to a number of them. The cost is the subscription which goes to paying licensing fees.
        southerntofu 5y ago
        Subsidizing the cost of current production of stuff (whether hardware or immaterial) is an actual concern. The easiest solution of course is to abolish money and private property and to abundantly redistribute power and wealth, but that's not happening anytime soon as privileges cannot be abolished through wishful thinking or self-criticism from the elites. On the other hand, subsidizing the cost of production of information that's already been produced and account for? That makes no sense from an economic perspective. If you're talking about reaping benefits for past work (not accounting for a "cost" because past production costs nothing in the present by definition), it raises ethical questions: why would the newspaper/editor get paid and not the actual author, now that the logistical work of publishing the article has been accounted for (and even profited upon) by the editor? There is nothing inherently natural or fair about copyright laws. We need broader perspectives if we want to develop a knowledge economy based on sharing information and resources for social progress, if you'd like to call it like that.
southerntofu 5y ago
> I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus support journalists like Ms Brown. I don't know in the english-speaking world, apart from the Intercept who i understand has its own internal controversies, but in the french-speaking world we have a few independent publications, like CQFD, L'envolée, Le Monde Libertaire, Mediapart, Le Canard Enchaîné... I assume it's the same on your side of the ocean and they're just not well known? > Let Google track my reading Why would you need tracking? There's some donation-based subscriptions for publications, and a centralized donation dashboard sounds amazing. Liberapay and similar donation-based platforms are good for that kind of stuff. Also, how would you actually measure? Size in bytes of content? Number of characters? Time spent? Is there any metric that can be fair to all and cannot be gamed to maximize profits while not providing quality content?
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Tracking makes sense in this case--divvying up the amount received according to which articles you read. Basically Kindle Unlimited for newspapers.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    According to what criteria, as i was asking in my parent comment? I don't think we can find a fair one. Also Kindle Unlimited, what's that? Is that like spotify/netflix for ebooks? I'm personally hostile to private companies operating such schemes, but as a public service it sounds like it may make sense. Of course, the tracking is unacceptable either way, and we should pursue better models in order to finance cultural productions. Hint: the answers are the same as for every other area of activities (including free software), just redistribute the **ing wealth already, which the people who "own" it didn't produce.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dillondoyle 5y ago
I love Apple News and think it had real potential. But then lots of the 'premium' became like extra premium. Even though I still pay for it premium articles included now are mostly magazines, which the New Yorker and Businessweek are good but most are like lifestyle I don't really care about. I would like WaPo back in the bundle and same with adding NyTimes. I'd pay another $5 a month but seems like the big papers make more themselves even with smaller % of readers. Seems like streaming is going the same way.
AndrewOMartin 5y ago
For the UK you can have a Private Eye subscription [26 issues (1 year) by Direct debit £34.00].

chiefalchemist 5y ago

What happens to that model when someone starts reporting at Google, FB, NYT, Wash Post, etc. is tracking your every scroll and click? And does this biz model actually promote higher quality journalism? Anecdotally, it doesn't look that way. I'm not sure what the solution is but giving more powerful to the powerful is not a sustainable route to fixing The Fourth Estate.

throwaway98797 5y ago

Like this? https://www.apple.com/apple-news/ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/

1024core 5y ago
Except that I'm not in the Apple walled garden. No Apple devices here.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> It costs so much more to actually deliver a physical newspaper, and printing it costs so much more. [Compared to a digital newspaper distributed over the internet.] It is not obvious that either of these claims is true. What do you think the marginal cost of one printing is? One delivery? Mail delivery is quite literally the paradigm example of something that is expensive if you do it once but essentially free at scale.

ghaff 5y ago

The short answer is that "targeted" (and we know how well that works) or not, digital advertising isn't nearly as lucrative as print advertising was. The old rule of thumb was that subscriptions/newsstand sales paid for the distribution of the physical paper. Advertising paid for everything else. Digital subscriptions obviously don't incur the same physical distribution costs Although a fair bit still exists so long as you're going to have a physical paper and the digital production has its own costs. (Digital plus physical costs more than physical alone.) In any case, how many people who won't pay $100/year for the NYT--plus maybe another $100/year for something like The Economist will pay $100-200/year for a broad-based subscription to a bunch of different pubs?

cromulent 5y ago
Yes, For example, nearly all job advertisements used to be in newspapers. Rivers of gold, they were called in the Australian print media. All that revenue is long gone from newspapers.
- ghaff 5y ago
  The collapse of the classifieds--and I'm guessing job adverts around the same time--were the first dagger into US newspaper profitability.
boring_twenties 5y ago
Economist is almost $200/year for digital-only, after the first year ($94.50 currently).

paulpauper 5y ago

Digital gets you access to the archives

southerntofu 5y ago
Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity, research and education, and political critique that newspaper archives are locked down behind subscription?
- ghaff 5y ago
  You can probably find libraries with subscriptions. Someone has to pay for it.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    A library with subscriptions has quite a lot of infrastructure to maintain. A digital archive of published newspapers can be maintained by a single worker using off-the-shelf hardware for an annual budget lesser than the salary of a single newspaper exec, or even better a community project like archive.org or Wikimedia Commons who's dedicated to that kind of stuff.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      So who is paying the organization that created the information in the first place? That's the cost. The cost of a local library subscribing to a service is fairly trivial. My tiny local library subscribes to a number of them. The cost is the subscription which goes to paying licensing fees.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        Subsidizing the cost of current production of stuff (whether hardware or immaterial) is an actual concern. The easiest solution of course is to abolish money and private property and to abundantly redistribute power and wealth, but that's not happening anytime soon as privileges cannot be abolished through wishful thinking or self-criticism from the elites. On the other hand, subsidizing the cost of production of information that's already been produced and account for? That makes no sense from an economic perspective. If you're talking about reaping benefits for past work (not accounting for a "cost" because past production costs nothing in the present by definition), it raises ethical questions: why would the newspaper/editor get paid and not the actual author, now that the logistical work of publishing the article has been accounted for (and even profited upon) by the editor? There is nothing inherently natural or fair about copyright laws. We need broader perspectives if we want to develop a knowledge economy based on sharing information and resources for social progress, if you'd like to call it like that.

southerntofu 5y ago

> I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus support journalists like Ms Brown. I don't know in the english-speaking world, apart from the Intercept who i understand has its own internal controversies, but in the french-speaking world we have a few independent publications, like CQFD, L'envolée, Le Monde Libertaire, Mediapart, Le Canard Enchaîné... I assume it's the same on your side of the ocean and they're just not well known? > Let Google track my reading Why would you need tracking? There's some donation-based subscriptions for publications, and a centralized donation dashboard sounds amazing. Liberapay and similar donation-based platforms are good for that kind of stuff. Also, how would you actually measure? Size in bytes of content? Number of characters? Time spent? Is there any metric that can be fair to all and cannot be gamed to maximize profits while not providing quality content?

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Tracking makes sense in this case--divvying up the amount received according to which articles you read. Basically Kindle Unlimited for newspapers.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  According to what criteria, as i was asking in my parent comment? I don't think we can find a fair one. Also Kindle Unlimited, what's that? Is that like spotify/netflix for ebooks? I'm personally hostile to private companies operating such schemes, but as a public service it sounds like it may make sense. Of course, the tracking is unacceptable either way, and we should pursue better models in order to finance cultural productions. Hint: the answers are the same as for every other area of activities (including free software), just redistribute the **ing wealth already, which the people who "own" it didn't produce.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dillondoyle 5y ago

I love Apple News and think it had real potential. But then lots of the 'premium' became like extra premium. Even though I still pay for it premium articles included now are mostly magazines, which the New Yorker and Businessweek are good but most are like lifestyle I don't really care about. I would like WaPo back in the bundle and same with adding NyTimes. I'd pay another $5 a month but seems like the big papers make more themselves even with smaller % of readers. Seems like streaming is going the same way.

AndrewOMartin 5y ago

For the UK you can have a Private Eye subscription [26 issues (1 year) by Direct debit £34.00].