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Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of

Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of tech discrepancy). This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money. It is a sad state, but hardly it is fair to blame someone else for it. Own it up, create credible news products, and monetize it like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read it. The lawsuit admits that what we call "news" is really entertainment with the goal of producing content, not to inform the public, but to maximize CPM. Fox News already made it official [1]. Now you have to explain it to your viewers/readers too and make life less stressful for everyone. [1] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1454288815049240586 https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1454288815049240586 Edit: I get a lot of value from my local newspaper. It is monetized with (local) ads but they are unobtrusive and non-invasive. The content matters because there is a limit to how much it can fit in an edition. I can simply skip the pages with ads if I do not want to read them. And sometimes the ads are the only thing I am interested in, when I am looking for something specific or want to see what is new. That is the beauty of it. Now compare that to the horror story that is the online news. Content is created by the droves. Ads are everywhere, obtrusive and invasive to user experience, not to mention all the tracking and mining of user data. I never purposefully check the online ads. It is a lose-lose-lose situation for the business, the advertiser and for the user. The only reason it exists is because it is 'free', coming with two caveats. One obvious - we get what we pay for. The other not as obvious - we are what we read. "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

cageface 5y ago
Newspapers and magazines have derived most of their revenue from ads since long before Google and Facebook. They're lucky to break even on subscription fees.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it. Everything after that has been sour grapes.
  - imachine1980_ 5y ago
    Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      My local newspaper is a notoriously worthless rag that has probably done more to harm humanity than to benefit it, including starting a major war.
      - trulyme 5y ago
        Your local newspaper has started a major war?
        jeffbee 5y ago
        Yes. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
        yesbabyyes 5y ago
        I was about to say you must be from New York, but I was rather thinking about NYTimes, Judith Miller and the US War on Iraq. Plus ça change...
        trulyme 5y ago
        Incredible, I'm glad I asked - TIL. Thank you!
mdoms 5y ago
News media organisations were forced into bed with Google and Facebook by a tragedy of the commons. Readership was going to go to those platforms as long as any small proportion of media organisations published there. Smaller orgs like the ones involved in these lawsuits had only two options - publish on FB/G or miss out on a large proportion of readership. > monetize like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read them Very, very few news organisations have been sustained only or even primarily on readership spend. Your local paper you paid $1.20 for per issue barely paid for its own distribution with that money, much less the staff writers and freelancers doing the actual reporting. Unfortunately advertising dollars have been paying for news for much longer than FB/G have existed.
- briffle 5y ago
  My local paper was bought by USA Today. They shut down the printing press, and laid off everyone except a literally handful of reporters/staff. Printing is done at another paper they bought in another medium sized town 60 miles away. They increased the cost of the paper subscription (even online) and force us view the ads, even with a online subscription. Last time I looked at a giant Sunday paper, 3 articles were local, and from the reporters, the rest was from the USA today pool reporters or AP. The other fun thing was cancelling, that requires a telephone call, only during east coast business hours (we are west coast) and then 20 min of them doing anything they could to keep me from actually cancelling. they can F-ck off and die.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    I'm not sure how your post is related at all? Is USA Today one of the small news organisations involved in these lawsuits? My understanding is that USA Today is a behemoth news organisation.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yes, my understanding was always that subscriptions and newsstand sales basically paid to get a physical paper into people's hands. But actually creating the content for that physical paper was paid for by advertising. I'm sure the specifics varied but, to a first approximation, those were the basic economics. Put the paper online for free and, again to a first approximation, you now need the same advertising revenue to support the same reporting, editing, etc. But with the classifieds blown up and advertising generally going from print dollars to digital dimes, the revenue available to put out a newspaper cratered while the relevant costs didn't go down much at all.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
annexrichmond 5y ago
I'd love a subscription service that gives me access to all my local news sources
- babypuncher 5y ago
  My idea has been to build a centralized subscription service, somewhat like Apple News, but structured differently. You buy a monthly subscription that grants you credits each month. You can allocate those credits to whichever news sources you want, and for that month you get unlimited access to your chosen outlets.
  - bduerst 5y ago
    That's just monthly newspaper subscriptions with extra steps. Better to do the music subscription route, where the user sub revenue is automatically divided amongst all the newspapers the user accesses for the month. IIRC Google tried to do this with display ads, where you would see pictures of cats instead of display ads on the news pages and pay the website the few cents they would have made on the impression. Dunno what happened to it but people who are willing to pay for content always overestimate the size of the market of other people who are willing to do the same.
- ghaff 5y ago
  The problem is that, increasingly, those local news sources simply don't exist. My town doesn't have a newspaper. There's a website that hosts local news in my state but there is just hardly ever anything there. I get more news from Facebook or Next Door.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money." People have this notion that the media used to be way more honest and impartial before the digital age but I doubt that was ever the case. Papers were playing fast and loose with the truth long before the ad revenue model in order to get subscriptions (edit: and quite frankly, to be partisan and shape public opinion). The internet no doubt accelerated things, but I assert it only exacerbated what was endemic to journalism itself. Even George Washington had to deal with sensationalism and slander: "He regarded the press as a disuniting, "diabolical" force of falsehoods, sentiments that he expressed in his Farewell Address." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Second_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Second_term
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I think people have short memories. They perceive that the news used to be better, so they assume it was always that way and that the current supposed decline is unfixable- after all, such a state of affairs has no precedent! Similarly with claims of censorship over covid. Yes it is a cause for concern, but no, it probably won't lead to the Ministry of Information, as some people claim. But crucially, even if it does, that isn't in itself dystopia, our governments created propoganda ministries during WW2, and they don't continue to exist today. Military censorship has always existed but the propoganda ministry of WW2 was much more active than just censoring military information.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Also Yellow Press, which was the big fake news of the late 1800/early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism For a while during the last half of the 20th century, this type of sensationalism was staved off though, as the FCC had determined anyone with a news broadcast license had the public responsibility to present different sides to controversial issues. And for a while, it worked pretty well. This was the fairness doctrine, which was abolished in 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
colinmhayes 5y ago
No one is willing to pay for news because as soon as a piece is published there are thousands of other publishers posting copycat articles. The copycats have next to zero expenses and post on aggregators like facebook with no fee so everyone just reads them. It's a tragedy of the commons that only the government can solve since people prefer to read their news through facebook/google blurbs for free.
- KorematsuFredt 5y ago
  > tragedy of the commons that only the government can solve Tragedy of commons are not always solvable by governments, in this case most certainly not as people in government have their incentives aligned with getting favorable publicity from media. Government can be a more effective regulatory mechanism for say polluted air or river because cleaner air benefits everyone equally. Media is not the case. Media benefits to those who can control it and putting government in charge will give us another CNN and FOX News.
babypuncher 5y ago
The problem with monetizing news the old fashioned way is cultural. When a user posts a paywalled article on Reddit or Tildes or any number of other similar sites, they are often crucified for it and asked to post low quality blogspam versions instead. People are used to the idea that news should be free, and seem unwilling to give up that idea.
KorematsuFredt 5y ago
> Own it up, create credible news products, and monetize it like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read it. Yes. Online adverts did not break journalism. The news media houses did this to themselves and frankly I think they are getting what they deserve. "Opposite of reading is not reading, it is reading something like New Yorker or Atlantic". - Source unknown.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Slightly differing perspective: Newspapers and Google/Facebook (hereinafter "Big Tech") are not competitors, regarding the product of news. The former produces news, the later does not. Access to news can be sold. Readers will pay for it. The question is what exactly does Big Tech produce that is saleable. IOW, what does Big Tech produce that can be sold. What do they produce that people will pay for. With respect to news product, Big Tech are intermediaries, what we colloquially refer to as "middlemen". Newspapers may be willing to provide some news "for free", e.g., via a website. However newspapers also can sell subscriptions. Newspapers have a saleable product. The saleable product is what attracts an audience, irrespective of whether readers are paying subscribers or not. Big Tech generally provide access to the work of others "for free". Generally, Big Tech has no saleable products (cf. services) of their own labour. Any audience that Big Tech attracts is reliant on the products of others. Big Tech generally does not produce the content it uses to attract an audience. The content belongs to someone else. To any reader who sincerely believes Big Tech has "products" (cf. services) of their own labour, please consider how much revenue could Big Tech "earn" without acting as intermediaries for the work product of others. IOW, how much revenue could Big Tech earn solely from selling their own "products". Would Big Tech still be "Big". NB. "cf. services" as used above means please distinguish products (tangible) from services (intangible).
- freediver 5y ago
  The sellable product that Big Tech sells is aggregating and ranking billions of pages of content somebody else produced, so when you type a few characters into a search box, the most relevant results show up in few milliseconds. The ability to do that turns out to be more valuable than the actual content being read if measured by a typical ARPU of Big Tech vs ARPU of News co. One of the problems of course is that Big Tech then does not actually sell this valuable product but chooses to monetize it with ads instead, which did democratize access to information, but also incentivized creation of huge quantities of low quality information and misinformation (again mostly for the purpose of monetization with ads). Whether we are better off as a society is another question.

cageface 5y ago

Newspapers and magazines have derived most of their revenue from ads since long before Google and Facebook. They're lucky to break even on subscription fees.

jeffbee 5y ago
Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it. Everything after that has been sour grapes.
- imachine1980_ 5y ago
  Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    My local newspaper is a notoriously worthless rag that has probably done more to harm humanity than to benefit it, including starting a major war.
    - trulyme 5y ago
      Your local newspaper has started a major war?
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        Yes. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
        yesbabyyes 5y ago
        I was about to say you must be from New York, but I was rather thinking about NYTimes, Judith Miller and the US War on Iraq. Plus ça change...
        trulyme 5y ago
        Incredible, I'm glad I asked - TIL. Thank you!

mdoms 5y ago

News media organisations were forced into bed with Google and Facebook by a tragedy of the commons. Readership was going to go to those platforms as long as any small proportion of media organisations published there. Smaller orgs like the ones involved in these lawsuits had only two options - publish on FB/G or miss out on a large proportion of readership. > monetize like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read them Very, very few news organisations have been sustained only or even primarily on readership spend. Your local paper you paid $1.20 for per issue barely paid for its own distribution with that money, much less the staff writers and freelancers doing the actual reporting. Unfortunately advertising dollars have been paying for news for much longer than FB/G have existed.

briffle 5y ago
My local paper was bought by USA Today. They shut down the printing press, and laid off everyone except a literally handful of reporters/staff. Printing is done at another paper they bought in another medium sized town 60 miles away. They increased the cost of the paper subscription (even online) and force us view the ads, even with a online subscription. Last time I looked at a giant Sunday paper, 3 articles were local, and from the reporters, the rest was from the USA today pool reporters or AP. The other fun thing was cancelling, that requires a telephone call, only during east coast business hours (we are west coast) and then 20 min of them doing anything they could to keep me from actually cancelling. they can F-ck off and die.
- mdoms 5y ago
  I'm not sure how your post is related at all? Is USA Today one of the small news organisations involved in these lawsuits? My understanding is that USA Today is a behemoth news organisation.
ghaff 5y ago
Yes, my understanding was always that subscriptions and newsstand sales basically paid to get a physical paper into people's hands. But actually creating the content for that physical paper was paid for by advertising. I'm sure the specifics varied but, to a first approximation, those were the basic economics. Put the paper online for free and, again to a first approximation, you now need the same advertising revenue to support the same reporting, editing, etc. But with the classifieds blown up and advertising generally going from print dollars to digital dimes, the revenue available to put out a newspaper cratered while the relevant costs didn't go down much at all.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

annexrichmond 5y ago

I'd love a subscription service that gives me access to all my local news sources

babypuncher 5y ago
My idea has been to build a centralized subscription service, somewhat like Apple News, but structured differently. You buy a monthly subscription that grants you credits each month. You can allocate those credits to whichever news sources you want, and for that month you get unlimited access to your chosen outlets.
- bduerst 5y ago
  That's just monthly newspaper subscriptions with extra steps. Better to do the music subscription route, where the user sub revenue is automatically divided amongst all the newspapers the user accesses for the month. IIRC Google tried to do this with display ads, where you would see pictures of cats instead of display ads on the news pages and pay the website the few cents they would have made on the impression. Dunno what happened to it but people who are willing to pay for content always overestimate the size of the market of other people who are willing to do the same.
ghaff 5y ago
The problem is that, increasingly, those local news sources simply don't exist. My town doesn't have a newspaper. There's a website that hosts local news in my state but there is just hardly ever anything there. I get more news from Facebook or Next Door.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money." People have this notion that the media used to be way more honest and impartial before the digital age but I doubt that was ever the case. Papers were playing fast and loose with the truth long before the ad revenue model in order to get subscriptions (edit: and quite frankly, to be partisan and shape public opinion). The internet no doubt accelerated things, but I assert it only exacerbated what was endemic to journalism itself. Even George Washington had to deal with sensationalism and slander: "He regarded the press as a disuniting, "diabolical" force of falsehoods, sentiments that he expressed in his Farewell Address." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Second_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Second_term

FridayoLeary 5y ago
I think people have short memories. They perceive that the news used to be better, so they assume it was always that way and that the current supposed decline is unfixable- after all, such a state of affairs has no precedent! Similarly with claims of censorship over covid. Yes it is a cause for concern, but no, it probably won't lead to the Ministry of Information, as some people claim. But crucially, even if it does, that isn't in itself dystopia, our governments created propoganda ministries during WW2, and they don't continue to exist today. Military censorship has always existed but the propoganda ministry of WW2 was much more active than just censoring military information.
bduerst 5y ago
Also Yellow Press, which was the big fake news of the late 1800/early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism For a while during the last half of the 20th century, this type of sensationalism was staved off though, as the FCC had determined anyone with a news broadcast license had the public responsibility to present different sides to controversial issues. And for a while, it worked pretty well. This was the fairness doctrine, which was abolished in 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

colinmhayes 5y ago

No one is willing to pay for news because as soon as a piece is published there are thousands of other publishers posting copycat articles. The copycats have next to zero expenses and post on aggregators like facebook with no fee so everyone just reads them. It's a tragedy of the commons that only the government can solve since people prefer to read their news through facebook/google blurbs for free.

KorematsuFredt 5y ago
> tragedy of the commons that only the government can solve Tragedy of commons are not always solvable by governments, in this case most certainly not as people in government have their incentives aligned with getting favorable publicity from media. Government can be a more effective regulatory mechanism for say polluted air or river because cleaner air benefits everyone equally. Media is not the case. Media benefits to those who can control it and putting government in charge will give us another CNN and FOX News.

babypuncher 5y ago

The problem with monetizing news the old fashioned way is cultural. When a user posts a paywalled article on Reddit or Tildes or any number of other similar sites, they are often crucified for it and asked to post low quality blogspam versions instead. People are used to the idea that news should be free, and seem unwilling to give up that idea.

KorematsuFredt 5y ago

> Own it up, create credible news products, and monetize it like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read it. Yes. Online adverts did not break journalism. The news media houses did this to themselves and frankly I think they are getting what they deserve. "Opposite of reading is not reading, it is reading something like New Yorker or Atlantic". - Source unknown.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Slightly differing perspective: Newspapers and Google/Facebook (hereinafter "Big Tech") are not competitors, regarding the product of news. The former produces news, the later does not. Access to news can be sold. Readers will pay for it. The question is what exactly does Big Tech produce that is saleable. IOW, what does Big Tech produce that can be sold. What do they produce that people will pay for. With respect to news product, Big Tech are intermediaries, what we colloquially refer to as "middlemen". Newspapers may be willing to provide some news "for free", e.g., via a website. However newspapers also can sell subscriptions. Newspapers have a saleable product. The saleable product is what attracts an audience, irrespective of whether readers are paying subscribers or not. Big Tech generally provide access to the work of others "for free". Generally, Big Tech has no saleable products (cf. services) of their own labour. Any audience that Big Tech attracts is reliant on the products of others. Big Tech generally does not produce the content it uses to attract an audience. The content belongs to someone else. To any reader who sincerely believes Big Tech has "products" (cf. services) of their own labour, please consider how much revenue could Big Tech "earn" without acting as intermediaries for the work product of others. IOW, how much revenue could Big Tech earn solely from selling their own "products". Would Big Tech still be "Big". NB. "cf. services" as used above means please distinguish products (tangible) from services (intangible).

freediver 5y ago
The sellable product that Big Tech sells is aggregating and ranking billions of pages of content somebody else produced, so when you type a few characters into a search box, the most relevant results show up in few milliseconds. The ability to do that turns out to be more valuable than the actual content being read if measured by a typical ARPU of Big Tech vs ARPU of News co. One of the problems of course is that Big Tech then does not actually sell this valuable product but chooses to monetize it with ads instead, which did democratize access to information, but also incentivized creation of huge quantities of low quality information and misinformation (again mostly for the purpose of monetization with ads). Whether we are better off as a society is another question.