5 ms·

I've noticed the NYT has many more ads than it used to. My instincts tell me this is the death spasm of print. It means things are worse for the print media t

by pg 18y ago

I've noticed the NYT has many more ads than it used to. My instincts tell me this is the death spasm of print. It means things are worse for the print media than even their current revenues suggest, because falling ad prices have been concealed by selling more ads. But they're going to run out of room for that soon.

DenisM 18y ago
Should we brainstorm saving the poor bastards? I'll start. I would pay for content if: 1. It is personalized to my area of interest. It should be narrow enough to avoid unrelated stuff, wide enough to cover particaulr area compeletely such that I never need to go read another source for the same area. It should be de-duped. I hate dups. 2. All references and facts are properly attributed and cited. The moment I see "scientists found that 30% of..." I cancel my subscription without hesitation. 3. Non-factual pieces (opinions) are from well-known experts. At least there should be a credibility trail behind those people. 4. Content is peer reviewed. If there is a stretch somewhere, I want to know about it. 5. Content is short and to the point. I have short attention span and not much time. 6. Conflicts of interest and biases should be apparent. For example Hardward Business Review is doing a reasonably god job on 2, 3, 6 and somtimes 5. HN is pretty good with #1 (except dupes which are pretty bad).
- Alex3917 18y ago
  I would never pay to read any author who described their writing as content. Which is pretty much why I never read the paper or magazines anymore. Every time I pick one up the only thing I can think about is the fact that the articles were only written to sell advertising. Newspapers aren't designed to enlighten you, they're designed to sell dildos and tofu.
- pg 18y ago
  Within YC we often brainstorm about the future of journalism, but it is more in the spirit of killing the existing players than saving them. History suggests that is the right way to frame the question. Companies as deeply entrenched in obsolete habits as most current print media companies tend not to survive major shifts like the arrival of the Internet. So instead of asking "How do you fix the NYT?" I'd ask "How would you kill the NYT?" Notice how much more scope you have for new answers there. If you're trying to fix them, you're implicitly constrained to make something like a newspaper. If you're trying to kill them, all you have to do is make something their advertisers prefer; that could be practically anything.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    I did not suggest saving any particular newspaper, instead I suggested saving the idea of professional journalism. As a user I may benefit from the efforts of someone whos full-time job is to find good, relevant news, write well and do thoughtful analysis and discussion. Some of the newspapers used to play this role, but their economics is busted. The default assumtion here seems to be that professional journalism will die as well, and I would like to challenge this assumption. If it is to survive, which form would it take? What does it take to make people pay for their news?
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    "Within YC we often brainstorm about the future of journalism" There's probably a good mailing list on this topic. It seems like all the most intelligent discussion on the net takes place on secret mailing lists. The problem is that to find out where this discussion is taking place you'd really have to email a bunch of wonkish j-school types. (And if anyone knows where people are discussing this, send me a note.)
    - brandnewlow 18y ago
      As a j-school graduate, I can promise you not much of interest is being said on the topic there. Newspapers, according to my former classmates working at them and people I meet at industry events, seem to still be run by people over 45, who for the most part think they'll be able to sneak out the backdoor just before the whole thing falls apart. As I said in another thread, I'm here in Chicago trying to figure out how to kill off the local papers. After months wasted spent working on features and design and stuff that doesn't really matter if you don't have a plan, I've started calling up companies that advertise in local neighborhood papers and meeting with them. Met with three on Thursday. I'm making this up as I go along but here's what I more or less was asking: 1. Who are you trying to reach? 2. How are you doing it now? 3. What works well about that approach? 4. What's not working well for you? Pretty basic stuff, right? Here's what I'm learning so far: 1. Small neighborhood businesses (think of 37Signals Italian restaurant analogy) are advertising in weekly neighborhood papers like this one: http://www.hpherald.com/ http://www.hpherald.com/ They're paying about $250-300 for a 4 inch square ad that runs in the paper and on the web....which is a static PDF (!) that gets updated once a week. A back of napkin calculation following a look through that paper leads me to believe they're selling 8-12k in ads in it each week. The businesses tell me this tool is prohibitively expensive and don't like that you can't measure its results. Now, I asked them what they'd rather have, and they tried to pitch me on some kind of online coupon setup, where people could print off coupons and the businesses pay me each month based on how many coupons they tally up. This seems like a suckers game. But a few ideas I'm toying with that could be better for them: 1. A daily neighborhood e-mail. They would be paying to reach X inboxes and could measure click-thru's using e-mail tools. Each e-mail would have a short article on something cool in the neighborhood, a la Daily Candy and extensive upcoming event listings (more on that below). Once you get enough of a subscriber base, then you start publishing the content to the web as well to rack in the pageviews and let readers connect. 2. Stepping in as their go-to guy to manage their adwords/CPC campaigns. This would be a lot less fun, but is a direction worth considering. Some of these little restaurants could be well served from getting listed high for certain searches and getting optimized on Google Maps, for example. Other observation that I'm still trying to make sense of: The people I'm meeting with say they'd like a place to find neighborhood events. As a guy who hangs out on Hacker News, I am aware of going.com, eventful.com, upcoming, craigslist and all manner of event sites. Yelp, The Onions new decider.com site, all sorts of people are doing them. And yet these advertisers had never heard of any of them and the people at the community groups said they wanted a decent online neighborhood calendar. Which got me thinking that maybe a Garysguide.org-style events site for neighborhood events could play well. Start with just a few neighborhoods with loud identities and own them, get known as the place to go to see what's happening in those hoods. Perhaps this would be the web-half of the daily newsletter. Anyway, the future of journalism conversation is fascinating. I'd be interested in any suggestions or observations from the peanut gallery on here. As I said, I'm making this up as I go along. A network of cheap, scalable, interesting neighborhood event + news sites seems like something that might be attractive if you can pull in the local eyeballs. Thoughts? As for Wired's advertising/editorial ratio, FWIW I just asked my friends working at magazines about it and they say that the ideal ratio is 40% ads and 60% editorial. I'm looking around online for some backup on that front and not finding much to be honest, but that's what they're teaching at j-school on the subject. So Wired's probably hurting if they're over 50% ads.
- michaelneale 18y ago
  7. I can get it in a paper form (or similar) that is safe to stuff in a bag and read on the beach? (and the news isn't stuff that gets out of date in a second). I don't understand the online "magazine" concept - not sure how it translates. I find wired nice airport/toilet reading.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    That's what iPhone is for.
    - michaelneale 18y ago
      Well maybe kindle, but neither iphone or kindle are disposable.
robg 18y ago
Haven't the classifieds collapsed as a viable revenue stream? Probably have to make that up elsewhere.
- aurumaeus 18y ago
  Absolute opposite. They're the only viable revenue stream, but most papers don't realize this, and don't focus on it.

by pg 18y ago

DenisM 18y ago

Should we brainstorm saving the poor bastards? I'll start. I would pay for content if: 1. It is personalized to my area of interest. It should be narrow enough to avoid unrelated stuff, wide enough to cover particaulr area compeletely such that I never need to go read another source for the same area. It should be de-duped. I hate dups. 2. All references and facts are properly attributed and cited. The moment I see "scientists found that 30% of..." I cancel my subscription without hesitation. 3. Non-factual pieces (opinions) are from well-known experts. At least there should be a credibility trail behind those people. 4. Content is peer reviewed. If there is a stretch somewhere, I want to know about it. 5. Content is short and to the point. I have short attention span and not much time. 6. Conflicts of interest and biases should be apparent. For example Hardward Business Review is doing a reasonably god job on 2, 3, 6 and somtimes 5. HN is pretty good with #1 (except dupes which are pretty bad).

Alex3917 18y ago
I would never pay to read any author who described their writing as content. Which is pretty much why I never read the paper or magazines anymore. Every time I pick one up the only thing I can think about is the fact that the articles were only written to sell advertising. Newspapers aren't designed to enlighten you, they're designed to sell dildos and tofu.
pg 18y ago
Within YC we often brainstorm about the future of journalism, but it is more in the spirit of killing the existing players than saving them. History suggests that is the right way to frame the question. Companies as deeply entrenched in obsolete habits as most current print media companies tend not to survive major shifts like the arrival of the Internet. So instead of asking "How do you fix the NYT?" I'd ask "How would you kill the NYT?" Notice how much more scope you have for new answers there. If you're trying to fix them, you're implicitly constrained to make something like a newspaper. If you're trying to kill them, all you have to do is make something their advertisers prefer; that could be practically anything.
- DenisM 18y ago
  I did not suggest saving any particular newspaper, instead I suggested saving the idea of professional journalism. As a user I may benefit from the efforts of someone whos full-time job is to find good, relevant news, write well and do thoughtful analysis and discussion. Some of the newspapers used to play this role, but their economics is busted. The default assumtion here seems to be that professional journalism will die as well, and I would like to challenge this assumption. If it is to survive, which form would it take? What does it take to make people pay for their news?
- Alex3917 18y ago
  "Within YC we often brainstorm about the future of journalism" There's probably a good mailing list on this topic. It seems like all the most intelligent discussion on the net takes place on secret mailing lists. The problem is that to find out where this discussion is taking place you'd really have to email a bunch of wonkish j-school types. (And if anyone knows where people are discussing this, send me a note.)
  - brandnewlow 18y ago
    As a j-school graduate, I can promise you not much of interest is being said on the topic there. Newspapers, according to my former classmates working at them and people I meet at industry events, seem to still be run by people over 45, who for the most part think they'll be able to sneak out the backdoor just before the whole thing falls apart. As I said in another thread, I'm here in Chicago trying to figure out how to kill off the local papers. After months wasted spent working on features and design and stuff that doesn't really matter if you don't have a plan, I've started calling up companies that advertise in local neighborhood papers and meeting with them. Met with three on Thursday. I'm making this up as I go along but here's what I more or less was asking: 1. Who are you trying to reach? 2. How are you doing it now? 3. What works well about that approach? 4. What's not working well for you? Pretty basic stuff, right? Here's what I'm learning so far: 1. Small neighborhood businesses (think of 37Signals Italian restaurant analogy) are advertising in weekly neighborhood papers like this one: http://www.hpherald.com/ http://www.hpherald.com/ They're paying about $250-300 for a 4 inch square ad that runs in the paper and on the web....which is a static PDF (!) that gets updated once a week. A back of napkin calculation following a look through that paper leads me to believe they're selling 8-12k in ads in it each week. The businesses tell me this tool is prohibitively expensive and don't like that you can't measure its results. Now, I asked them what they'd rather have, and they tried to pitch me on some kind of online coupon setup, where people could print off coupons and the businesses pay me each month based on how many coupons they tally up. This seems like a suckers game. But a few ideas I'm toying with that could be better for them: 1. A daily neighborhood e-mail. They would be paying to reach X inboxes and could measure click-thru's using e-mail tools. Each e-mail would have a short article on something cool in the neighborhood, a la Daily Candy and extensive upcoming event listings (more on that below). Once you get enough of a subscriber base, then you start publishing the content to the web as well to rack in the pageviews and let readers connect. 2. Stepping in as their go-to guy to manage their adwords/CPC campaigns. This would be a lot less fun, but is a direction worth considering. Some of these little restaurants could be well served from getting listed high for certain searches and getting optimized on Google Maps, for example. Other observation that I'm still trying to make sense of: The people I'm meeting with say they'd like a place to find neighborhood events. As a guy who hangs out on Hacker News, I am aware of going.com, eventful.com, upcoming, craigslist and all manner of event sites. Yelp, The Onions new decider.com site, all sorts of people are doing them. And yet these advertisers had never heard of any of them and the people at the community groups said they wanted a decent online neighborhood calendar. Which got me thinking that maybe a Garysguide.org-style events site for neighborhood events could play well. Start with just a few neighborhoods with loud identities and own them, get known as the place to go to see what's happening in those hoods. Perhaps this would be the web-half of the daily newsletter. Anyway, the future of journalism conversation is fascinating. I'd be interested in any suggestions or observations from the peanut gallery on here. As I said, I'm making this up as I go along. A network of cheap, scalable, interesting neighborhood event + news sites seems like something that might be attractive if you can pull in the local eyeballs. Thoughts? As for Wired's advertising/editorial ratio, FWIW I just asked my friends working at magazines about it and they say that the ideal ratio is 40% ads and 60% editorial. I'm looking around online for some backup on that front and not finding much to be honest, but that's what they're teaching at j-school on the subject. So Wired's probably hurting if they're over 50% ads.
michaelneale 18y ago
7. I can get it in a paper form (or similar) that is safe to stuff in a bag and read on the beach? (and the news isn't stuff that gets out of date in a second). I don't understand the online "magazine" concept - not sure how it translates. I find wired nice airport/toilet reading.
- DenisM 18y ago
  That's what iPhone is for.
  - michaelneale 18y ago
    Well maybe kindle, but neither iphone or kindle are disposable.

robg 18y ago

Haven't the classifieds collapsed as a viable revenue stream? Probably have to make that up elsewhere.

aurumaeus 18y ago
Absolute opposite. They're the only viable revenue stream, but most papers don't realize this, and don't focus on it.