2 ms·

If you can figure out how to make quality journalism profitable again, there are plenty of people who would love to find out.

CamperBob2 5y ago
Every news source that maintains a paywall should get with Apple, Google and maybe Microsoft and Facebook/Meta and set up a syndication arrangement using all of these companies (at a minimum) as access points. Then, offer an "all access pass" where someone can pay, say, $1000 or $2000 a year, access any news article from a participating provider, and never encounter another paywall, anywhere. Additionally, for $5000/year, access is ad-free. The universal subscription fee would be divided among the syndicate itself for distribution to its members as well as its access provider. The majority (but not all) of the revenue would be allocated to the members on the basis of how many times their articles were actually read. You're welcome! Any other apparently-unsolvable problems need solving, you guys know where to find me.
- torbTurret 5y ago
  Nobody will pay four-figures for digital news access that still has ads.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    That's a negotiating point, not a dealbreaker. The important thing is to offer both options. What would keep this plan from working is if there were a lot of major holdouts that insist on keeping their own paywalls and subscription model. Can't account for that level of stupidity, but the market will eventually eliminate it. Apple News in its current state is a step in the right direction, they just need to bring it to its logical conclusion.
  - otterley 5y ago
    I'm not sure most people would pay 4 figures, or even 3, for access to quality journalism - even if it didn't have ads. I remember when the Wall Street Journal came out on the Internet in 1997 - it was completely paywalled (no free articles at all), and the early pricing was scorned by critics and the public, even if it wasn't astronomical ($50/year for non-print subscribers, $29/year for print subscribers).
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      What we know doesn't work are thousands of individual paywalls and associated subscriptions. Can you imagine journalism continuing on this path for another 20 years? I feel quite strongly that syndication is the only possible solution, if we're going to compensate journalists fairly. One subscription, no user-hostile gatekeepers or paywalls, no artificial barriers to either publication or exploration. Apart from that, it's no longer 1997, and people are used to paying for stuff online. Frequently they pay a LOT for stuff online. There is nothing radical about this.
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        Centralization has several serious problems. How do you determine who gets paid? If it's by impressions, you have all the clickbait problems as with advertising. What happens when the central gatekeeper decides they've had enough of anyone criticizing their interests and starts booting people out who do? Or journalists self-censor for fear of that? What do we do about privacy? Having a big database of everything everyone reads is bad. Tying it to payment info and therefore identity is unacceptable. We do not make lists for future fascists or communists. In theory it's possible to address this with cryptography and zero knowledge proofs, but we all know it won't be in a centralized system, because they want to track and control everything you read. Meanwhile the real problem with subscription fees is people read different sources in different amounts. If you read one religiously, you pay the $5/month. But it should be possible to get the articles a la carte for a low price, e.g. $0.10 each, for the publications you don't read all the time. So the thing we really need here is an anonymous payments system with low transaction fees. The blockchain people keep trying to do this, and let them if they can, but how about this. A payment processor that uses the cryptography and the zero knowledge proofs. They know who you are, you pay them, you get a secret which allows you to spend the money. Now you can use the secret to pay for articles or anything else, and the payment processor debits your account and credits the seller's, but they can't tell who you paid, only that you paid someone and someone paid them. This would be highly useful in general, but especially here. This might require some constraints like not supporting chargebacks, or maybe the cryptographers can figure it out. But if you can make an anonymous $0.10 transaction with no transaction fee, that's a solution.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  This seems like you live in a crazy bubble. $1,000 a year is an astronomical amount to most people. Netflix costs $120. Hulu is something like $60 (with ads). There is no way most people can afford that to read articles. Given that digital goods have almost no cost of distribution, better to try for $100/year for more than 10x the people.

CamperBob2 5y ago

Every news source that maintains a paywall should get with Apple, Google and maybe Microsoft and Facebook/Meta and set up a syndication arrangement using all of these companies (at a minimum) as access points. Then, offer an "all access pass" where someone can pay, say, $1000 or $2000 a year, access any news article from a participating provider, and never encounter another paywall, anywhere. Additionally, for $5000/year, access is ad-free. The universal subscription fee would be divided among the syndicate itself for distribution to its members as well as its access provider. The majority (but not all) of the revenue would be allocated to the members on the basis of how many times their articles were actually read. You're welcome! Any other apparently-unsolvable problems need solving, you guys know where to find me.

torbTurret 5y ago
Nobody will pay four-figures for digital news access that still has ads.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  That's a negotiating point, not a dealbreaker. The important thing is to offer both options. What would keep this plan from working is if there were a lot of major holdouts that insist on keeping their own paywalls and subscription model. Can't account for that level of stupidity, but the market will eventually eliminate it. Apple News in its current state is a step in the right direction, they just need to bring it to its logical conclusion.
- otterley 5y ago
  I'm not sure most people would pay 4 figures, or even 3, for access to quality journalism - even if it didn't have ads. I remember when the Wall Street Journal came out on the Internet in 1997 - it was completely paywalled (no free articles at all), and the early pricing was scorned by critics and the public, even if it wasn't astronomical ($50/year for non-print subscribers, $29/year for print subscribers).
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    What we know doesn't work are thousands of individual paywalls and associated subscriptions. Can you imagine journalism continuing on this path for another 20 years? I feel quite strongly that syndication is the only possible solution, if we're going to compensate journalists fairly. One subscription, no user-hostile gatekeepers or paywalls, no artificial barriers to either publication or exploration. Apart from that, it's no longer 1997, and people are used to paying for stuff online. Frequently they pay a LOT for stuff online. There is nothing radical about this.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      Centralization has several serious problems. How do you determine who gets paid? If it's by impressions, you have all the clickbait problems as with advertising. What happens when the central gatekeeper decides they've had enough of anyone criticizing their interests and starts booting people out who do? Or journalists self-censor for fear of that? What do we do about privacy? Having a big database of everything everyone reads is bad. Tying it to payment info and therefore identity is unacceptable. We do not make lists for future fascists or communists. In theory it's possible to address this with cryptography and zero knowledge proofs, but we all know it won't be in a centralized system, because they want to track and control everything you read. Meanwhile the real problem with subscription fees is people read different sources in different amounts. If you read one religiously, you pay the $5/month. But it should be possible to get the articles a la carte for a low price, e.g. $0.10 each, for the publications you don't read all the time. So the thing we really need here is an anonymous payments system with low transaction fees. The blockchain people keep trying to do this, and let them if they can, but how about this. A payment processor that uses the cryptography and the zero knowledge proofs. They know who you are, you pay them, you get a secret which allows you to spend the money. Now you can use the secret to pay for articles or anything else, and the payment processor debits your account and credits the seller's, but they can't tell who you paid, only that you paid someone and someone paid them. This would be highly useful in general, but especially here. This might require some constraints like not supporting chargebacks, or maybe the cryptographers can figure it out. But if you can make an anonymous $0.10 transaction with no transaction fee, that's a solution.
HWR_14 5y ago
This seems like you live in a crazy bubble. $1,000 a year is an astronomical amount to most people. Netflix costs $120. Hulu is something like $60 (with ads). There is no way most people can afford that to read articles. Given that digital goods have almost no cost of distribution, better to try for $100/year for more than 10x the people.