4 ms·
One reason why so few people are willing to pay for good content is that there is so much of it. If the NYT goes goes broke and stops publishing, or puts their
by morsch 11y ago
One reason why so few people are willing to pay for good content is that there is so much of it. If the NYT goes goes broke and stops publishing, or puts their stuff behind a paywall and consequently goes broke and stops publishing, people don't care, because there's dozens and dozens of other publications with the same quality competing for their attention. Along with, of course, a whole internet full of click-bait, zero research garbage, but that is sort-of beside the point: there is free quality journalism to be had elsewhere, in such seeming abundance that I can't say that this carefree attitude by readers is short-sighted.
Another thing is that the manner in which journalism is consumed has changed fundamentally: we pick and chose individual articles from a variety of sources instead of reading or skimming through one publisher's entire newspaper for any given day. In other words, it's not even the NYT that's competing for attention with other publishers, it's any given article that's competing for attention with any other article.
It's possible that I'm not giving the NYT and their ilk enough credit: while I think there's no debating there's an overabundance of thoughtful, well-written long- (and short-) form content out there -- more of it alone on HN that I'd have to quit my job to read it all -- I'm open to the suggestion that much of it is still different from what newspapers like the NYT do, or strive to do, particularly in terms of dedicated research and fact-checking.
If that's the case, and there remains a demand for this kind of content as opposed to content that's "just" well-written and thoughtful, maybe at some point before it's gone it'll be rare enough that people will start paying for it.
- ForrestN 11y agoBriefly: the NYT has no true peers, which is why it's called "The Paper of Record." Nationally, globally and locally, it plays an indispensable civic role, to say nothing of its value qua "content on the internet." Much of their reporting shapes the conversations that define many, many dimensions of contemporary life, and if they were to disappear quite a bit of important truth would go uncovered. Journalism is not merely something to be consumed, it is a necessary part of the social ecosystem. The New York Times is too big to fail, and is easily among the most important corporations of any size, period, despite it's small capitalization. edit: for what it's worth, my father was a journalism professor and sometimes-head of one of the top journalism programs in the US, so I grew up hearing a lot about this sort of thing!
- meatysnapper 11y agoPerhaps in the US it is considered the paper of record. In the land of shoddy journalism it is pathetically easy to be the best print paper. However, the rest of the world has significantly better news and papers- Spiegel, Le Monde, FT, Economist, Haaretz.
- pyre 11y ago> FT For articles on comrade glorious leader Putin?
- intrasight 11y agoPerhaps it would surprise you that we have those publications here in the US too. You might also be surprised that the rest of the world has the New York Times.
- azernik 11y agoI read three out of those five plus the Times, and I am not convinced they're significantly better - in the contrary, the New York Times does a lot of things better. There are some advantages these papers have - for example, Haaretz is more willing to put good analysis on its (web, Hebrew-edition) front page, but I think that reflects an American culture of journalistic caution about mixing even vaguely editorial content with news, which I generally enjoy. (e.g. however much I disagree with the WSJ editorial board, I generally regard their news as credible and well-reported; I cannot say the same about e.g FAZ's straight reporting on Greece.
- djloche 11y agoI think part of the New York Times' problem is that they're trying to keep both parts of the business alive, but the two ad channels compete with each other. At some point I would hope that the family controlled board decides to go all in on being a digital-only press. Everyone works remote, with small regional offices as necessary. They retain their artists, photographers, editors, writers, and other content producing staff. They retain their existing technology team that works with the editorial team on the cool features as was posted. The print business and assets are spun out as a separate company providing white label newsprinting services (perhaps as The New York Times Print Services Company), and eventually sold. I think they can continue to run the dual mode business for 5-10 more years, but eventually the numbers on print won't make sense anymore.