[HN Gopher] How the media industry keeps losing the future
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How the media industry keeps losing the future
Author : tysone
Score : 21 points
Date : 2024-02-28 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| neogodless wrote:
| Alternate link: https://archive.is/m2vt6
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no irony here
| neogodless wrote:
| Probably a worthwhile debate - how much does paywall
| circumvention affect these organizations' bottom lines?
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm guessing not a huge amount. Most people probably don't
| bother. But don't actually know to what degree porosity of
| paywalls is either a positive or negative factor.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I don't think newspapers know either. Many keep switching
| back and forth.
| neogodless wrote:
| At think at its core, the question is "how do you make people
| value journalism in such a way that they'll pay for it, pay for
| the quality of it?"
|
| Everyone's taste is now shaped by the most profitable marketing,
| perhaps more than anything else. So en masse, we are funneled
| into whatever content delivery will extract the most overall
| money.
|
| How could high quality news ever compete with that?
| ghaff wrote:
| The other factor is unbundling of newspapers. People used to
| pay for foreign bureaus and investigative journalism because
| they had to in order to see the classified ads for an apartment
| they wanted to rent or the score of last night's game.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Free "Alt" weeklies have been a thing pre-internet, but maybe
| some landlord's thinking was that someone paying $1 for a
| newspaper was a better tenant (true or not).
| ciabattabread wrote:
| You just reminded me that there's a Craig Newmark Graduate
| School of Journalism at CUNY.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Ha! That's like the Buggy Whip University having a Henry
| Ford School.
| vmchale wrote:
| Newspapers were funded by classifieds at their peak.
|
| It's always been about advertising!
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| It doesn't help that the outfits that are profitable have
| been strip mined by private equity.
| crtified wrote:
| Like anything else, it needs to add value.
|
| The user needs to be able to ask themselves afterwards " _did
| reading this article, imbibing this knowledge, add $1 of value
| to my life? and is this article an efficient way to obtain that
| value?_ ".
| treflop wrote:
| News is pretty boring. I mean I do find it interesting, but if
| I'm going to be honest, I only pay for it (like 5 magazines and
| 4 newspapers) cuz I know the world would fall apart if actual
| news disappeared, but actually paying for my own reading
| probably isn't worth it.
| JieJie wrote:
| Gift link:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/technology/news-media-ind...
| graypegg wrote:
| I'm sure it's been done before, but I wouldn't mind free
| synopsis, pay small per-article fee for full version.
|
| The tease paragraphs used on every news site always feel "mean"
| to me in some way. The text fades out, or it cuts off mid-
| sentence.
|
| If there was a bespoke intro+conclusion that actually
| communicated something valuable, I would reach for the Apple Pay
| button to drop 3$ for the added context and analysis.
|
| Could even have a little marker in the full article, a little
| past the full fat intro: "Single Article subscribers should start
| reading here"
|
| There's no easy solutions though, I'm not going to pretend that
| works, even if I would like that.
| floren wrote:
| These days you mostly see "above the fold" used to refer to
| website content, but it originated from the way newspapers
| would cram their top headlines into the upper half of the front
| page, so it would be visible at a glance in a newspaper machine
| or on a newsstand. If the headlines (or the local top stories
| in the "ears" of the front page) grabbed you, you dropped your
| nickel/dime/quarter and got the paper.
|
| If you can feel confident based on headlines that yes, there's
| at least a few things in today's NYT that will interest you, it
| seems like paying $1 to get a PDF or whatever makes sense.
| graypegg wrote:
| Oh! I had no idea that was the etymology. Learned something
| today. Thanks!
|
| I think digital needs to fight a little harder than just
| headlines and above-the-fold style intros. I think including
| a short conclusion is valuable. Also valuable to write this
| free micro-article separately, with the intention of being a
| complete thought. It means people could post something here
| or other social media, and the unpaid state would actually
| communicate something.
|
| That would make me feel better about paying, since it doesn't
| feel like I'm being fished. The faded out text and incomplete
| sentences do make me feel that.
| bitbckt wrote:
| Entomology is the study of insects. You mean etymology. :)
| graypegg wrote:
| Caught it within the edit grace period, thanks!
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I think they're too narrowly focused on subscriptions and I used
| to work in journalism.
|
| I don't want buy the whole paper for some arbitrary length of
| time, with maybe a few exceptions in print that are already hyper
| focused on my specific interests (New Yorker, NYRB).
|
| They need to have a button that says .99C/ for this article, one
| click, apple pay, no sign up flow that makes me navigate away, no
| dark pattern bullshit.
|
| It has to be so close to instant that it operates right in the
| moment an article catches my interest.
|
| And maybe, if I buy five articles in one month, maybe give me an
| auto-renew subscription option.
|
| I don't think this is a hard problem, I think the issue is:
|
| 1. Wanting to force a subscription model for revenue
| predictability, etc. 2. Mimicking of crappy web bad patterns for
| capturing user juice and retention. 3. Editorial drift that's
| chasing social media clicks and compromises the product.
| martinky24 wrote:
| This sounds entirely unappealing to me -- not to say you're
| wrong, just to say that not everyone agrees and your
| preferences might not be as widespread as you think they are.
|
| (And its likely someone, somewhere has focus grouped or A/B
| tested this. It's not a novel idea. But there's a reason it
| doesn't exist, probably that it results in LESS money for the
| content producer)
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| It could obviously live side by side with an actual
| subscription, and I'm sure this has been gamed out and called
| too risky in a hundred meetings.
|
| But newspapers need to reconcile that in an era of hypersmall
| publications (aka blogs, substack, etc.) they are no longer
| in a market which is about the overall package (the paper)
| but the individual writer.
|
| The business model does not reflect this reality, tie the
| transaction to that value, or respect that diversity of
| authorship is the value of the web. I want to read 20 authors
| from 20 papers, not 20 from 1. There is less and less value
| in having "a venue" to subscribe to apart from the support it
| gives individual authors to do in-depth work.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| I never understood how something like individual
| journalists, writers, reviews, etc on Substack or on their
| own blogs haven't formed something like a journalist
| cooperative.
|
| It's owned and operated by the journalists themselves, and
| they all maintain their independent and individual
| reporting. But now with the added support of 20-30 other
| journalists to work together for the really big stories.
|
| And it's easy enough to have the overarching cooperative
| submit for grants, donations, or other revenue-generating
| activities to support the journalism.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I would LOVE to have the big/fancy/major newspapers to have
| the option of paying $0.50 or $1 for articles. I don't read
| papers often, but once in a while, if something major is
| happening, I would love to read a 2-3-4 page analysis, with
| graphs, maps, etc. in a 'serious' newspaper. And than happens
| once per quarter.
|
| I'm a firm believer of "The less time one gives to the
| newspapers the better.." (Title: Nobody's Girl (En Famille),
| Author: Hector Malot)
| (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27690/27690-h/27690-h.htm)
| robsh wrote:
| It should be $1 for limited-term access to the whole site, not
| one article.
|
| Not just journalism but all subscription media should have non-
| subscription options. All the streaming video or music services
| should allow 1 day access for $1 or 1 week for $5. It costs
| them nothing to do so and I don't think it will erode their
| monthly subscribers since it's going to be cheaper for a month.
| hawski wrote:
| Aren't micro-transactions the holy grail that we all say we
| want (and indeed may need), but so far nothing?
|
| Newspapers, articles, videos, games, apps etc.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The _hardest_ (technical) problem for that flow is the fixed
| cost of transactions making such small payments unappealing. To
| even make such a flow appealing, we need to first find a way to
| not lose 15% (or more) of a $1 transaction to payment
| processing.
| dboreham wrote:
| I can't tell if an article is worth reading until after I've
| read it, or a decent chunk of it. So I wouldn't pay for
| articles on this basis. I do pay for movies like this, but in
| that case I've already read reviews, been told by a friend that
| it's good, or seen it win awards (and all that information is
| free).
| mandmandam wrote:
| Funny time for the NYT to pontificate on honesty, or having a
| future.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Back in the early days, when our local paper went digital, I
| couldn't get a simple subscription that just gave me the paper,
| the WHOLE paper in a PDF, you had to use their app to get the
| page you wanted to see, etc. It was horrible.
|
| That was back when I believe the paper honestly reported the
| news.
|
| Enter the New York Times, the world leading experts in pushing a
| narrative that the facts can support (or get close enough to
| support to fudge it). They aren't honest brokers, and most of the
| industry followed them into the toilet.
| reactordev wrote:
| They showed how you can make more money as BSaaS provider than
| news paper provider. Of course all the tycoons will switch
| over. Those who didn't, died.
| sackfield wrote:
| I wonder if a better model for journalism is the model employed
| by Hindenburg Research. They find stories that when published
| will have a devastating impact on a company, short the company,
| then drop their research and reap the change in market
| conditions. For everything there isn't a market for prediction
| markets and side-effects on other assets might make up the gap.
|
| The way I see it, this would require these publications to be
| truthful about their reporting, if it was revealed they weren't
| the market would no longer react as strongly to their signals.
| graypegg wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with them, but how do they protect
| sources? If you work somewhere, and want to make something
| public that will tank the price of your company, filtering your
| insider trading thru a journal like that seems pretty effective
| if they shelter their sources like any other big news org.
|
| Does Hindenburg run into any liability there?
| taeric wrote:
| This idea that "media" has always owned "news" is frustrating.
| Would be akin to lamenting the death of almanacs and how facts
| are now out of reach for people that read them.
|
| There is certainly a shift happening. But the idea that most
| people benefit from knowing world news is dubious. To that end,
| what I regret is how out of touch with local news we all seem to
| have become.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Agreed. I basically have no knowledge of what's happening
| within 30 min of me while world news is everywhere. I also
| agree that world news is mostly useless. Why do I care about
| most of it? How will it ever affect me? But it gives them
| infinite stories to write to make more clickbait so we'll click
| on their site and either see ads or pay for access. They dug
| their own graves.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Yeah I'll even go a step further. Sometimes I feel it's
| actively psychologically harmful for a nonstop treadmill of
| very remote prescribed drama to piped into every citizen's head
| (election/israel/ukraine/etc).
|
| Not to say those things don't matter at all, but I've noticed
| (take NPR for example) a huge bias toward negative news that is
| completely out of my control and often around political
| problems (as opposed to say scientific problems).
| chankstein38 wrote:
| 100% on point! Every time I'm getting my oil changed or I'm
| at a doctor's office, they've got the news on in the waiting
| rooms and it seems like the whole world is on fire and every
| house near me is burning and everyone is dying. Then I go
| live my life and everything is fine.
|
| The reporting feels like it has no connection to reality.
| Yeah, the stuff happened. But that stuff just happens.
| Buildings catch fire, people die in car accidents, robberies
| happen, etc I just don't need to know about every single
| instance of it that happens on the surface of the planet.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| >How the media industry keeps losing the future
|
| _click_
|
| (giant image) 2 sentences talking about some dude I've never
| heard of.
|
| _close_
|
| Huh. I wonder. I mean, obviously it wasn't the only nail in the
| coffin and they need money but I mostly see nytimes, Wired, BI,
| etc links and look for an archive link or just move on.
|
| I'd value it more but half of the time they don't even do any
| actual reporting. It's just rewriting the same crap 5 other
| papers wrote from a 100 character release from the AP.
|
| Yeah, I value quality, honest reporting. The problem is most of
| the time they all are in the same race to the bottom. I saw a
| video on youtube the other day from "Forbes Breaking News" titled
| "Biden's dog bit secret service agents on 24 different
| occasions".. WOW Forbes that's definitely breaking news! It's
| really important that we watch that RIGHT THIS MOMENT isn't it?
| Really important info there.
|
| These "journalists" and their papers can whine all they want. The
| reality is they are out of touch and toxic. Yeah, you lost to
| comment sections because people can actually just read through
| them.
|
| You also lost because half of the time when I see a tiktok or
| video on twitter about an event, it's from the source. Someone,
| on the scene, actually looking at what's happening. Then the bigs
| swarm on that person's DMs "CAN WE WRITE AN ARTICLE?!"
|
| And as far as investigative journalism goes, youtube is full of
| people doing it 100x better than most of the crap I see these
| days in big orgs. Do I want to watch the 25min rundown of the
| whole situation from the perspective of some dude who spent the
| last 3 months researching with his team? Or do I want to read a
| 3000 word article that bloviates about irrelevant things while
| occasionally repeating the same factoid they based the whole
| piece on?
|
| I'm just one person with a pretty cynical view of most things but
| my view is that news orgs lost because they dug their own graves.
| Because they continued to be out of touch and manipulative and
| wrong in so many cases that I stopped caring about whatever
| clickbait garbage they were trying to serve me.
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