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The root problem is that the media's business model has failed. We need a new business model before the situation improves. What might that business model look

The root problem is that the media's business model has failed. We need a new business model before the situation improves. What might that business model look like? My preference would be for consumers of news to pay for that news. This aligns incentives and gives us power to choose the media companies that serve us best. We're seeing part of this transition with all the news orgs putting up paywalls and name-brand journalists starting their own Substack. But I don't know if this will work--are there enough people willing to pay? I subscribe to 4 streaming services (Netflix, Disney, Apple+, and HBO) but only one news source (NYT). And I've never been tempted to pay for a journalist's Substack, no matter how talented. That's a revealed preference right there. Maybe the answer is to bundle entertainment with news. If each of those streaming services came with a news channel and cost an extra $2 per month, would I subscribe? Maybe. Of course, that's how it used to work!

ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
People used to pay $2 a day for a newspaper, what's $2 a month gonna do?
abound 1y ago
For me, it seems like the solution is some sort of seamless micropayments solution for individual articles. I don't want to subscribe to 30 different outlets, but I'd pay $1-2 per article for a good piece of journalism from those outlets. The problem is that micropayments are expensive. 2.9% and 30 cents is 32.9% on a dollar transaction (and basically all of it if you charge 50 cents to read an article). I've seen some cryptocurrency attempts at a solution, but I think a more viable solution would be a single account you periodically top up, and some aggregator that distributes payments to outlets in bulk to minimize fees. I've looked at others' attempts in this space [1][2][3]*, but none of them seem to have taken off and I'm not sure why. It seems like a win for publishers, unless those micropayment news readers end up cannibalizing their subscriber base. [1] https://readwithacta.com/ https://readwithacta.com/ [2] https://www.supertab.co/ https://www.supertab.co/ [3] https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ * I think Brave's approach of replacing ads with their own and paying in their own crypto is atrocious FWIW
pessimizer 1y ago
> My preference would be for consumers of news to pay for that news. I think that this is a fundamentally wrong headed idea. I might go farther and say that you're not going to create a new model for news, you're going to discover a new model, or you're going to accept the model that you know works, and figure out how to make it conform to your values without breaking it. The facts: people who produce a lot of what we call news want it to be read. They write it because they have made a value judgement that it has importance, and that it should be reacted to by people. They should be backed by people who share those values - and those people should be paying for the news to be made and circulated to anyone who they can convince, beg, or trick into spending their time to understand what the producers of the news (both financiers and journalists) think is important. This is the current actual model of the news, even though it still masquerades as a strange public service model adapted from network television news where OTA channels were required to do something in return for their use of the public airwaves. This was never the print model, which is that you have a boss, and you do what he says. The other model of the news was never in danger. People will pay for sports and celebrity news and photographs because it is entertainment. People will even pay for crime news (of the titillating type, like violent street crime, rape and murder) because it also usually is entertainment masquerading as public service. None of that is in danger. It's important to be specific about what you're talking about. I think that the way to save the endangered part of the news is the same way we need to save everything - more collaboration tools for individuals to form into groups. I think we see this forming with things like Substack, Patreon and Locals, etc., and what we need is to make this more decentralized, and not routed through a few gatekeepers all additionally gated by banks and credit card companies. 500 people should be able to start a newsroom of 10 people with their spare pennies, and get what they believe and what they think is important to the widest audience possible. The Substacks, Patreons, etc. have shown that it is not hard to get that many people together to pay a few bucks for something they believe in, or simply like. If there's a tl;dr: you shouldn't be paying to read journalism; if anything, people should pay you to read their journalism. I wish I could take money from 80% of the garbage I wasted my time reading. We need microdebits, not micropayments.

ThrowawayTestr 1y ago

People used to pay $2 a day for a newspaper, what's $2 a month gonna do?

abound 1y ago

For me, it seems like the solution is some sort of seamless micropayments solution for individual articles. I don't want to subscribe to 30 different outlets, but I'd pay $1-2 per article for a good piece of journalism from those outlets. The problem is that micropayments are expensive. 2.9% and 30 cents is 32.9% on a dollar transaction (and basically all of it if you charge 50 cents to read an article). I've seen some cryptocurrency attempts at a solution, but I think a more viable solution would be a single account you periodically top up, and some aggregator that distributes payments to outlets in bulk to minimize fees. I've looked at others' attempts in this space [1][2][3]*, but none of them seem to have taken off and I'm not sure why. It seems like a win for publishers, unless those micropayment news readers end up cannibalizing their subscriber base. [1] https://readwithacta.com/ https://readwithacta.com/ [2] https://www.supertab.co/ https://www.supertab.co/ [3] https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ * I think Brave's approach of replacing ads with their own and paying in their own crypto is atrocious FWIW

pessimizer 1y ago

> My preference would be for consumers of news to pay for that news. I think that this is a fundamentally wrong headed idea. I might go farther and say that you're not going to create a new model for news, you're going to discover a new model, or you're going to accept the model that you know works, and figure out how to make it conform to your values without breaking it. The facts: people who produce a lot of what we call news want it to be read. They write it because they have made a value judgement that it has importance, and that it should be reacted to by people. They should be backed by people who share those values - and those people should be paying for the news to be made and circulated to anyone who they can convince, beg, or trick into spending their time to understand what the producers of the news (both financiers and journalists) think is important. This is the current actual model of the news, even though it still masquerades as a strange public service model adapted from network television news where OTA channels were required to do something in return for their use of the public airwaves. This was never the print model, which is that you have a boss, and you do what he says. The other model of the news was never in danger. People will pay for sports and celebrity news and photographs because it is entertainment. People will even pay for crime news (of the titillating type, like violent street crime, rape and murder) because it also usually is entertainment masquerading as public service. None of that is in danger. It's important to be specific about what you're talking about. I think that the way to save the endangered part of the news is the same way we need to save everything - more collaboration tools for individuals to form into groups. I think we see this forming with things like Substack, Patreon and Locals, etc., and what we need is to make this more decentralized, and not routed through a few gatekeepers all additionally gated by banks and credit card companies. 500 people should be able to start a newsroom of 10 people with their spare pennies, and get what they believe and what they think is important to the widest audience possible. The Substacks, Patreons, etc. have shown that it is not hard to get that many people together to pay a few bucks for something they believe in, or simply like. If there's a tl;dr: you shouldn't be paying to read journalism; if anything, people should pay you to read their journalism. I wish I could take money from 80% of the garbage I wasted my time reading. We need microdebits, not micropayments.