4 ms·

Quality reporting isn't free (I know, I sound like a paywall myself, but it's true). It involves people traveling to warzones or disaster zones to get a view on

Quality reporting isn't free (I know, I sound like a paywall myself, but it's true). It involves people traveling to warzones or disaster zones to get a view on the ground, or spending weeks chasing down and investigating leads, or getting interviews with important people or leaks from insiders. In a good news organisation, that is what the paywall is paying for (no doubt there are many bad news organisations that try to charge you for low-effort rubbish - nothing new there). A lot of significant news stories are broken by these reporters. If you get your news from independent blogs then I suspect either: * they are rehashing the content from the paid journalists (which is fine, but not really a sustainable model if everyone does it) * the news is not all that thoroughly researched * the person actually has put a lot of time and effort to deliver you in-depth news for free, in which case, you have to ask yourself why. To be clear, I use paywalls as well, but it's not as simple as saying the tech is cheaper now so there should be no reason to ever pay for news. If no one in society paid for news we'd all be worse off.

gosub100 3y ago
I have an idea: how about advertisers pay for ads placed on the websites of news outlets that have quality reporting? And furthermore, how about those ads dont pop up unexpectedly, don't auto play movies, dont have gruesome, edgy, salacious, or insulting graphics or images? Just make an offer and if I'm interested, I'll click. Any time I hear the debate about paywall vs content provider, they've never disambiguated whether it's greed for more money they are after (by participating in the ads arms-race) or whether they simply cannot be profitable by showing "normal" (aka late 1990's web) ads. I think that's telling.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  There are ad networks that serve simple, lightweight ads, and yet when people install an ad blocker their revealed preference equates to refusing all ads, even when they do not have any of the negative characteristics you mention.
  - RHSeeger 3y ago
    A VERY high percentage of ads are obnoxious. And a high enough percentage of ads are outright dangerous. Given that, using an ad blocker to keep yourself safe is a pretty sane choice. Even for sites that _try_ to have safe, sane ads; they're all using an ad network, and _that_ could get compromised, resulting in a dangerous payload (it's certain not an unknown occurrence). It's very hard to justify showing any ads.
    - gosub100 3y ago
      There was a great HN post a few years back about "chum", the taboola-style garbage ads and a breakdown on each one's tactic. For instance, one was talking about why they show close-ups that you can't quite tell what they are, or show a picture of swiss cheese so that the holes trigger our instinct of Trycolophobia (I think thats what it was called). It's not honest communication when they resort to those scummy tactics to steal our attention.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    What about the negative characteristics they didn't yet mention? Do those also track us across all the websites and share all their information with Meta and Google?
  - gosub100 3y ago
    so when grandma's windows box is rooted by a 0-day 'sploit from javascript served by visiting Gardening Today's website (grandma lives in Phoenix, GT is based in (let's say) New Hampshire), she can file a small claims case against Gardening Today to get her computer repaired? $125 initial estimate fee, $200 in "labor" to scan and remove the malware, treble damages, so $1000 sounds about right. I'm sure "quality journalists" would be happy to right these wrongs, wouldn't they?
  - rekabis 3y ago
    I was there in the late 90s to early 2000s, when the ad wars created auto-launching pop-overs and pop-unders. Where closing an ad would spawn 10 more, and where hitting any site on the wrong day could initiate a blizzard of browser windows that would bring even the most powerful PC of the era to its knees such that your only possible solution would be a hard shutdown and restart, your current active and unsaved data in any other program be damned. Sorry, but that particular well for revenue generation has been permanently poisoned for me. I will never suffer another online ad if I can possibly help it. It sucks for any legitimate website looking to support its operations, but those horses have long since fled the barn.
J_Shelby_J 3y ago
There just needs to be a better way to pay. I’d pay a dollar to read something interesting. I will not give them my CC though and sign up for something that’s a challenge to cancel. I know this has been said a million times before, but it is what it is. And I do 100% agree with you. One other thought I’ve had is that the comments on some of these news sites is worth the subscription cost on its own. For example the financial times comment section is top tier.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  That's very doubtable. The people who won't pay for a one month subscription won't pay a dollar to read an article either. Then they'll say "Oh, it's such a hassle to provide my payment information for something that is just a dollar". These paywalled magazines know the customers better than the customers themselves.
  - DennisP 3y ago
    The reason I mostly don't subscribe is I follow lots of aggregator links to lots of different publications, and I don't read enough at any one publication to subscribe. Micropayments would solve that for me, if they were reasonable (not a dollar per article) and just a simple button click, and I trusted that the article wasn't clickbait. Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves. Instead they're stuck in an ancient business model where you subscribe to a newspaper and a couple magazines and just read those, because it's all printed on paper and distributed in batches. In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      > Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves. I believe this is the future. Not only for traditional newspapers and magazines, but for all written content of quality online. Massive syndicates of blogs and websites under common subscription umbrellas. Like video streaming is today. Let's end this online nightmare of ads, scams, SEO, freeloading and clickbait! There's PressReader already today, but at $30 per month, it is too pricey for most. Readly is a whole lot cheaper for a smaller catalogue, but suffers from having an extremely bad user experience. I think most people would be interested in mainly news and independent blogs. What sane individual reads stuff like Rolling Stone or Vogue? > In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid. Agreed.
wcarss 3y ago
I think the problem comes down to: I have no faith that any for-profit journalism institution presenting a paywall will perform like a good actor in return, because the well of advertisement and content for money has been poisoned for so long by so many bad actors that there can be no trust. Cable promised that you paid it, so it would never have ads. At the movie theatre, you pay to get in, then pay $25 for sugarwater and corn, then sit through 25 minutes of advertisement. Does the international-megacorp-owned newspaper that shut down all its local news teams really need my $6/month? Would they do good if I gave it to them? The horse is unfortunately kinda out the barn door here. Not part of that group are smaller, intentionally local or mission driven, perhaps non-profit organizations, especially if they offer the news for free but then have a premium model that allows me to support them and get a non-essential frill. Those places are at least starting from a place of utility and trust, and I will reward them for it.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  How is so much of the content just corporate or police press releases without any further research? How are so many publications willing to provide a pseudo-authorative platform for the worst people on the planet in their op eds? Without even bringing up that I'd be paying for the privilege of having ads jammed in every three inches of scroll. I'm not paying a damn thing to help them spread bullshit as if it were news.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > How are so many publications willing to provide a pseudo-authorative platform for the worst people on the planet in their op eds? That's because newspapers should be platforms of free speech. If an editor refuses to take in an op-ed from important people, no mater how horrible, hen he is no fi for he job. If newspaper readers don't want to read the opinion of their enemies, they're just dumb.
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      They should be platforms of journalism. There are plenty of other venues available for "important people" to share their views. A news outlet lending credibility by uncritically publishing an opinion is not journalism.
gspencley 3y ago
> Quality reporting isn't free Quality reporting isn't common either. I check a few news sites now and again to find out what's going on in the world and the signal to noise ratio is abysmal. It's gotten to the point where, when something really major happens I often find out about it from other people first. Then I might hit the news sites to get more information but that information is usually pretty sparse. I do agree with your point. We need good journalists, and we need good distribution channels and compensation for those journalists. At the same time, the necessity is becoming a bit more niche thanks to the Internet and social media. For global affairs, journalists are an absolute necessity. For things that happen locally ? The age of smart phones and social media has created a situation where raw, unedited sources get uploaded in near realtime without click-baity headlines and spin-filled editorializing. Which calls into question of the necessity of mainstream news outlets for these types of stories. Typically you'll get many sources in one feed as well. I don't have the answer. I don't want "quality journalists" to disappear. I'm also seeing less and less of what I can identify as "quality" journalists. Most seem to be independent and post on Substack or produce documentary films. The paywalled mainstream news outlets look more and more like tabloids each day.
- DennisP 3y ago
  Micropayments would improve the incentives. Click a button, pay a penny, see the article. You'd only be willing to do that if you trust the publication to provide quality articles.
banku_brougham 3y ago
There's a whole genre of twitter post articles by the NYTimes that fail to credit the original work of the journalists at a local paper or NGO type of media service. So that phenomina can operate in reverse too

gosub100 3y ago

I have an idea: how about advertisers pay for ads placed on the websites of news outlets that have quality reporting? And furthermore, how about those ads dont pop up unexpectedly, don't auto play movies, dont have gruesome, edgy, salacious, or insulting graphics or images? Just make an offer and if I'm interested, I'll click. Any time I hear the debate about paywall vs content provider, they've never disambiguated whether it's greed for more money they are after (by participating in the ads arms-race) or whether they simply cannot be profitable by showing "normal" (aka late 1990's web) ads. I think that's telling.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago
There are ad networks that serve simple, lightweight ads, and yet when people install an ad blocker their revealed preference equates to refusing all ads, even when they do not have any of the negative characteristics you mention.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  A VERY high percentage of ads are obnoxious. And a high enough percentage of ads are outright dangerous. Given that, using an ad blocker to keep yourself safe is a pretty sane choice. Even for sites that _try_ to have safe, sane ads; they're all using an ad network, and _that_ could get compromised, resulting in a dangerous payload (it's certain not an unknown occurrence). It's very hard to justify showing any ads.
  - gosub100 3y ago
    There was a great HN post a few years back about "chum", the taboola-style garbage ads and a breakdown on each one's tactic. For instance, one was talking about why they show close-ups that you can't quite tell what they are, or show a picture of swiss cheese so that the holes trigger our instinct of Trycolophobia (I think thats what it was called). It's not honest communication when they resort to those scummy tactics to steal our attention.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  What about the negative characteristics they didn't yet mention? Do those also track us across all the websites and share all their information with Meta and Google?
- gosub100 3y ago
  so when grandma's windows box is rooted by a 0-day 'sploit from javascript served by visiting Gardening Today's website (grandma lives in Phoenix, GT is based in (let's say) New Hampshire), she can file a small claims case against Gardening Today to get her computer repaired? $125 initial estimate fee, $200 in "labor" to scan and remove the malware, treble damages, so $1000 sounds about right. I'm sure "quality journalists" would be happy to right these wrongs, wouldn't they?
- rekabis 3y ago
  I was there in the late 90s to early 2000s, when the ad wars created auto-launching pop-overs and pop-unders. Where closing an ad would spawn 10 more, and where hitting any site on the wrong day could initiate a blizzard of browser windows that would bring even the most powerful PC of the era to its knees such that your only possible solution would be a hard shutdown and restart, your current active and unsaved data in any other program be damned. Sorry, but that particular well for revenue generation has been permanently poisoned for me. I will never suffer another online ad if I can possibly help it. It sucks for any legitimate website looking to support its operations, but those horses have long since fled the barn.

J_Shelby_J 3y ago

There just needs to be a better way to pay. I’d pay a dollar to read something interesting. I will not give them my CC though and sign up for something that’s a challenge to cancel. I know this has been said a million times before, but it is what it is. And I do 100% agree with you. One other thought I’ve had is that the comments on some of these news sites is worth the subscription cost on its own. For example the financial times comment section is top tier.

carlosjobim 3y ago
That's very doubtable. The people who won't pay for a one month subscription won't pay a dollar to read an article either. Then they'll say "Oh, it's such a hassle to provide my payment information for something that is just a dollar". These paywalled magazines know the customers better than the customers themselves.
- DennisP 3y ago
  The reason I mostly don't subscribe is I follow lots of aggregator links to lots of different publications, and I don't read enough at any one publication to subscribe. Micropayments would solve that for me, if they were reasonable (not a dollar per article) and just a simple button click, and I trusted that the article wasn't clickbait. Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves. Instead they're stuck in an ancient business model where you subscribe to a newspaper and a couple magazines and just read those, because it's all printed on paper and distributed in batches. In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > Another business model would be some kind of group subscription to all the major papers and magazines. They could keep track of whose articles I read and distribute my payment among themselves. I believe this is the future. Not only for traditional newspapers and magazines, but for all written content of quality online. Massive syndicates of blogs and websites under common subscription umbrellas. Like video streaming is today. Let's end this online nightmare of ads, scams, SEO, freeloading and clickbait! There's PressReader already today, but at $30 per month, it is too pricey for most. Readly is a whole lot cheaper for a smaller catalogue, but suffers from having an extremely bad user experience. I think most people would be interested in mainly news and independent blogs. What sane individual reads stuff like Rolling Stone or Vogue? > In the absence of micropayments or group subscriptions, I pay for one major publication, bypass paywalls on the rest, and feel like I've done my bit. If everyone did the same, then with a reasonably random distribution the publications would all be getting paid. Agreed.

wcarss 3y ago

I think the problem comes down to: I have no faith that any for-profit journalism institution presenting a paywall will perform like a good actor in return, because the well of advertisement and content for money has been poisoned for so long by so many bad actors that there can be no trust. Cable promised that you paid it, so it would never have ads. At the movie theatre, you pay to get in, then pay $25 for sugarwater and corn, then sit through 25 minutes of advertisement. Does the international-megacorp-owned newspaper that shut down all its local news teams really need my $6/month? Would they do good if I gave it to them? The horse is unfortunately kinda out the barn door here. Not part of that group are smaller, intentionally local or mission driven, perhaps non-profit organizations, especially if they offer the news for free but then have a premium model that allows me to support them and get a non-essential frill. Those places are at least starting from a place of utility and trust, and I will reward them for it.

plagiarist 3y ago
How is so much of the content just corporate or police press releases without any further research? How are so many publications willing to provide a pseudo-authorative platform for the worst people on the planet in their op eds? Without even bringing up that I'd be paying for the privilege of having ads jammed in every three inches of scroll. I'm not paying a damn thing to help them spread bullshit as if it were news.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  > How are so many publications willing to provide a pseudo-authorative platform for the worst people on the planet in their op eds? That's because newspapers should be platforms of free speech. If an editor refuses to take in an op-ed from important people, no mater how horrible, hen he is no fi for he job. If newspaper readers don't want to read the opinion of their enemies, they're just dumb.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    They should be platforms of journalism. There are plenty of other venues available for "important people" to share their views. A news outlet lending credibility by uncritically publishing an opinion is not journalism.

gspencley 3y ago

> Quality reporting isn't free Quality reporting isn't common either. I check a few news sites now and again to find out what's going on in the world and the signal to noise ratio is abysmal. It's gotten to the point where, when something really major happens I often find out about it from other people first. Then I might hit the news sites to get more information but that information is usually pretty sparse. I do agree with your point. We need good journalists, and we need good distribution channels and compensation for those journalists. At the same time, the necessity is becoming a bit more niche thanks to the Internet and social media. For global affairs, journalists are an absolute necessity. For things that happen locally ? The age of smart phones and social media has created a situation where raw, unedited sources get uploaded in near realtime without click-baity headlines and spin-filled editorializing. Which calls into question of the necessity of mainstream news outlets for these types of stories. Typically you'll get many sources in one feed as well. I don't have the answer. I don't want "quality journalists" to disappear. I'm also seeing less and less of what I can identify as "quality" journalists. Most seem to be independent and post on Substack or produce documentary films. The paywalled mainstream news outlets look more and more like tabloids each day.

DennisP 3y ago
Micropayments would improve the incentives. Click a button, pay a penny, see the article. You'd only be willing to do that if you trust the publication to provide quality articles.

banku_brougham 3y ago

There's a whole genre of twitter post articles by the NYTimes that fail to credit the original work of the journalists at a local paper or NGO type of media service. So that phenomina can operate in reverse too