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Journalism's single publication subscription business model is as absurd as ever. I read hundreds of articles per week from dozens of journals from various ba
by satellite2 5y ago
Journalism's single publication subscription business model is as absurd as ever.
I read hundreds of articles per week from dozens of journals from various backgrounds. I have three or four local newspapers I'm interested in, two or three in my mother tongue and dozens of international publications I like to read from. I tried subscribing to one of the local papers and it got boring pretty fast. I tried to subscribe to the Economist, but apart from two or three great articles per week I found them very dogmatic and I missed on all local events.
As long as there is not a serious Spotify like entrant journalism will keep dying.
- lelandfe 5y agoIsn’t that precisely Apple News’ pitch?
- ghaff 5y agoApple News is just selected highlights from papers like the WSJ (i.e. those that have their own pricy subscriptions) though, no? I've thought of giving it a try.
- reaperducer 5y agoYou describe Apple News. Apple News+ has all the articles.
- ghaff 5y agoThis is what I was going by: "Apple News editors select the most important, compelling articles and surface them in Top Stories, Spotlight, and other collections. These must-reads include everything from the latest headlines to in-depth coverage of the biggest stories of the year. An Apple News+ subscription unlocks even more premium articles and issues from the world’s best newspapers and magazines." It makes it sound as if Apple News+ has more but not necessarily everything. In any case, I should probably give it a try.
- reaperducer 5y agoI subscribe to Apple News+. I can't speak for the newspapers because I never looked at those, but the magazines are page-for-page reproductions of the print magazines, though some are enhanced with hyperlinks and usable tables of contents.
- notreallyserio 5y agoApple News is kind of garbage, unfortunately. Hidden sources still take up space which (in my case) makes the home screen an ugly mess.
- donohoe 5y agoThere are services that emerge every few years but they all ultimately fail or get repurposed. The latest was Scroll (scroll.com) that was acquired by Twitter.
- reaperducer 5y agoAs long as there is not a serious Spotify like entrant journalism will keep dying. Apple News+ has two dozen local newspapers, and hundreds of magazines from around the world for $10/month. Browsing through random magazines was how I found out I have an interest in bird watching.
- ProAm 5y agoIt's just another walled garden.
- ghaff 5y agoIt's almost certainly unrealistic to expect every publication to participate in a single all-you-can-eat digital subscription scheme--though music comes pretty close.
- satellite2 5y agoThey don't have non US local papers. But yes, in term of business model that's pretty much what I think would be convenient for the user.
- reaperducer 5y agoThey don't have non US local papers. Today I learned that Toronto and Winnipeg are in the US.
- TekMol 5y agoI would prefer micropayments over an aggregator. Pay $0.05 to read an article.
- ghaff 5y agoThe traditional argument against this from Clay Shirky and probably others is [ADDED: mental] transaction costs. As soon as you're confronted with having to make a decision about whether the content behind a headline is worth paying for or not the mental calculus will often be "no." The relative recent popularity of all-you-can-eat streaming of music and video vs. a la carte purchases would seem to support this view--although one could also argue that digital music and video purchases aren't really "micro."
- 4dahalibut 5y agocrypto solves this
- 8note 5y agoSomething like brave solves it, by automatically paying without you deciding or not, hiding the cost in your electrical bill, or in higher prices at cafes. But you can have automatic payments without crypto too. Hiding payments from the UX is what's actually solving the problem
- ghaff 5y agoIt's "solving the problem" in the sense that it's spending your money without getting your explicit approval. That does make sense in some cases--my electrical, oil, and water bill basically work that way--but they're also pretty predictable and I probably couldn't realistically reduce them all that much even if I wanted to. ADDED: That said, it's not unrealistic to imagine a "hidden" micropayments scheme that deducts automatically and lets you know and/or just turns off if you hit some monthly threshold.
- 4y ago
- nicbou 5y agoIn Germany, we get access to top quality news and halfway decent media through the TV tax. It's 17.50€ or so per household.