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"If you’re curious why unionization has taken the journalism world by storm the last few years, you don’t have to look to politics or in-group signaling for an

"If you’re curious why unionization has taken the journalism world by storm the last few years, you don’t have to look to politics or in-group signaling for an explanation, basic economics will get you all the way there.... You reduce quantity of labor supplied and end up with higher equilibrium wages for those who manage to get their foot in the door. Of course, this will only heighten the favoring of those who can get their foot in the $3200/mo Brooklyn rent door while dressing fashionably and using “semiotics” correctly in a sentence, but that’s neither here nor there." This is a cute theory, and tickles some people's ideological fancy. But if the author had done more research, they would know where the CWA-NewsGuild is actually doing most of its new organizing (hint: not New York), what sorts of contract articles they bargain around hiring, and what the status quo in non-union newsrooms is. In brief, the Guild has been organizing tons of local newspapers in small cities and rural areas, particularly those bought up by private equity firms who want to cut the newsroom to the bone. They bargain contract articles that curb the nepotistic in-group hiring practices common at non-union papers. Source: I'm a former NewsGuild member, but at a software company, not a newspaper. Take a gander at the NewsGuild president's twitter account and you'll see many examples of these campaigns: https://twitter.com/gaufre https://twitter.com/gaufre

scarface74 5y ago
Don’t you think you’re just postponing the inevitable? Newspapers historically made most of their money from the classifieds when most people are using Facebook and Craigslist and the like. Then you have the fact that “only old people buy newspapers”
- mchanson 5y ago
  Everyone is always delaying the inevitable. It is the only thing anyone can do. None of us (or our companies) are getting out of this alive.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    The difference is that millions of people aren’t going to wake up one morning and say they want to start buying physical newspapers.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    I had a similar reaction when I read the grandparent post. Could we not say the same about most retail shops and people who work at them? "Bah, why bother? In the long run, you will all be replaced with robot pickers in an Amazon warehouse." And yet, the retail "experience" continues to innovate / find / create experiences that people cannot have with pure online shopping.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Would you invest in either a bookstore or a big retail shop in a mall today?
- bwestergard 5y ago
  In the U.S., the gutting of newsrooms has largely already happened, with disastrous consequences for democracy. There is simply too little actual investigative journalism, particularly at the local level, being done today. There are too few independent newsrooms. Consider that this was already a plotline in the early 2000s TV show "The Wire", written by former Baltimore-Sun reporter (and NewsGuild member) David Simon. The papers being organized are those that found a business model that works to a degree. The fight now is largely about whether their owners will continue to operate real newsrooms, which requires employing journalists at a living wage and having a fairly long time horizon for investment, or whether they will become essentially hollow brands with little original content. But to your point: yes, the broader political question of how the fourth estate is funded in the U.S. remains unresolved for now.
  - tharne 5y ago
    I think a big part of the problem with funding the news is the way papers handle online payments. I would happily pay a dollar or two to have online access to the NY Times, WSJ, or even my local town paper for a day. What I absolutely do not want to do is spend $500+ on 3 or more subscriptions that I will not read, or not read much of, on most days. For papers that still have a print edition, you can buy the day's paper. I don't know why you can't do the same thing online.
    - tsunamifury 5y ago
      You misunderstand. The subscriptions are not the key to revenue. The dollar even per article would be even less so. They are qualifiers for the ad demographic.
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        The NYTimes seems to be doing quite well on subscription revenue.
        Master_Odin 5y ago
- dv_dt 5y ago
  The only hyper local paper in my region that seems have worked out a stable model, delivers to everyone free and is the only outlet that covers local events.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  > Newspapers historically made most of their money from the classifieds when most people are using Facebook and Craigslist and the like. Really? I didnt know that. I assumed ad sales were how newspapers made money.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-kil... I was off when I said “most” > Newspaper classified advertising peaked in 2000 at $19.6 billion. In 2012, the most recent year for which data are available from the Newspaper Association of America, classified advertising was $4.6 billion — a drop of about 77 percent in barely more than a decade. > In 2000, classified ads accounted for about 40 percent of newspaper industry ad revenue. In 2012, classifieds made up about 18 percent of the ad revenue in an industry that was barely half the size it had been a decade earlier.
ekanes 5y ago
Please ignore if this takes us off-topic, but is this a case for micropayments, done via cryptocurrency? Because I think a successful implementation of micropayments might solve for this. I don't want to subscribe to any regular news, but I'd be happy to click a button that gives $.25 to the author/site. That doesn't work with CC fees, but if micropayments done via crypto (there are many with low/no transaction costs).
- nemothekid 5y ago
  If you have a paywall, a subscription works a lot better. If you don't, ads have a better CPM than donations.
- khalladay 5y ago
  I could be misremembering, but this seems like an idea that's been tried (and failed before). I have a memory of a service whose pitch was that you'd load funds into an account (a 1 time large transaction to get past the CC fees), and then individual sites could request micropayments from that account balance. No crypto then of course, but I'm not sure adding crypto makes this idea functionally different from how it looks without it. I could be totally off my rocker, but I'm pretty sure I remember this from sometime around the early 2010's ?
  - fragmede 5y ago
    The failure in the 2010s, is due to (lack of) network effects (from lack of participation), among other things. Crypto doesn't necessarily solve this but things like the Solana cryptocurrency enable solutions built on top of it.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    I think the point is that nobody wants to make some account, then pre-load that account with money, and then wonder what the balance is, etc. etc. etc. Yuck! If this problem is going to be properly solved, someone has to solve the [evidently very hard] problem of being able to send $0.25 over the Internet without all these accounts and without getting overwhelmed with fees from the banking establishment. If we had a magic wand, and there were no technical, business, or security constraints, what would the ideal micropayment system look like? A button on the web page that, when I press it, sends $0.25 from my bank account to the web site. Isn't something like that the holy grail? No need to "have an account" at the web site, and "have an account" with the payment processor or pre-load things with funds or any of that garbage. I already have a bank account, why do I need a handful of other accounts all over the place? There's the UX. I think it would be successful. But nobody has managed to build it yet.

scarface74 5y ago

Don’t you think you’re just postponing the inevitable? Newspapers historically made most of their money from the classifieds when most people are using Facebook and Craigslist and the like. Then you have the fact that “only old people buy newspapers”

mchanson 5y ago
Everyone is always delaying the inevitable. It is the only thing anyone can do. None of us (or our companies) are getting out of this alive.
- scarface74 5y ago
  The difference is that millions of people aren’t going to wake up one morning and say they want to start buying physical newspapers.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  I had a similar reaction when I read the grandparent post. Could we not say the same about most retail shops and people who work at them? "Bah, why bother? In the long run, you will all be replaced with robot pickers in an Amazon warehouse." And yet, the retail "experience" continues to innovate / find / create experiences that people cannot have with pure online shopping.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Would you invest in either a bookstore or a big retail shop in a mall today?
bwestergard 5y ago
In the U.S., the gutting of newsrooms has largely already happened, with disastrous consequences for democracy. There is simply too little actual investigative journalism, particularly at the local level, being done today. There are too few independent newsrooms. Consider that this was already a plotline in the early 2000s TV show "The Wire", written by former Baltimore-Sun reporter (and NewsGuild member) David Simon. The papers being organized are those that found a business model that works to a degree. The fight now is largely about whether their owners will continue to operate real newsrooms, which requires employing journalists at a living wage and having a fairly long time horizon for investment, or whether they will become essentially hollow brands with little original content. But to your point: yes, the broader political question of how the fourth estate is funded in the U.S. remains unresolved for now.
- tharne 5y ago
  I think a big part of the problem with funding the news is the way papers handle online payments. I would happily pay a dollar or two to have online access to the NY Times, WSJ, or even my local town paper for a day. What I absolutely do not want to do is spend $500+ on 3 or more subscriptions that I will not read, or not read much of, on most days. For papers that still have a print edition, you can buy the day's paper. I don't know why you can't do the same thing online.
  - tsunamifury 5y ago
    You misunderstand. The subscriptions are not the key to revenue. The dollar even per article would be even less so. They are qualifiers for the ad demographic.
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      The NYTimes seems to be doing quite well on subscription revenue.
      - Master_Odin 5y ago
dv_dt 5y ago
The only hyper local paper in my region that seems have worked out a stable model, delivers to everyone free and is the only outlet that covers local events.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
> Newspapers historically made most of their money from the classifieds when most people are using Facebook and Craigslist and the like. Really? I didnt know that. I assumed ad sales were how newspapers made money.
- scarface74 5y ago
  https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-kil... I was off when I said “most” > Newspaper classified advertising peaked in 2000 at $19.6 billion. In 2012, the most recent year for which data are available from the Newspaper Association of America, classified advertising was $4.6 billion — a drop of about 77 percent in barely more than a decade. > In 2000, classified ads accounted for about 40 percent of newspaper industry ad revenue. In 2012, classifieds made up about 18 percent of the ad revenue in an industry that was barely half the size it had been a decade earlier.

ekanes 5y ago

Please ignore if this takes us off-topic, but is this a case for micropayments, done via cryptocurrency? Because I think a successful implementation of micropayments might solve for this. I don't want to subscribe to any regular news, but I'd be happy to click a button that gives $.25 to the author/site. That doesn't work with CC fees, but if micropayments done via crypto (there are many with low/no transaction costs).

nemothekid 5y ago
If you have a paywall, a subscription works a lot better. If you don't, ads have a better CPM than donations.
khalladay 5y ago
I could be misremembering, but this seems like an idea that's been tried (and failed before). I have a memory of a service whose pitch was that you'd load funds into an account (a 1 time large transaction to get past the CC fees), and then individual sites could request micropayments from that account balance. No crypto then of course, but I'm not sure adding crypto makes this idea functionally different from how it looks without it. I could be totally off my rocker, but I'm pretty sure I remember this from sometime around the early 2010's ?
- fragmede 5y ago
  The failure in the 2010s, is due to (lack of) network effects (from lack of participation), among other things. Crypto doesn't necessarily solve this but things like the Solana cryptocurrency enable solutions built on top of it.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  I think the point is that nobody wants to make some account, then pre-load that account with money, and then wonder what the balance is, etc. etc. etc. Yuck! If this problem is going to be properly solved, someone has to solve the [evidently very hard] problem of being able to send $0.25 over the Internet without all these accounts and without getting overwhelmed with fees from the banking establishment. If we had a magic wand, and there were no technical, business, or security constraints, what would the ideal micropayment system look like? A button on the web page that, when I press it, sends $0.25 from my bank account to the web site. Isn't something like that the holy grail? No need to "have an account" at the web site, and "have an account" with the payment processor or pre-load things with funds or any of that garbage. I already have a bank account, why do I need a handful of other accounts all over the place? There's the UX. I think it would be successful. But nobody has managed to build it yet.