I was thinking about the fact that the advertising model for journalism sucks.
Among the many way it sucks, is that the user experience is terrible. The ads are annoying.
Also, it sucks that there is content out there I would like to see, but that I cannot because I don't subscribe to that particular source. For example, I don't have a WSJ subscription, so I hit their paywall all the time. But I do have a NYT subscription. I would like to see WSJ content, but I am not going to subscribe to them, because I don't want to pay for a bunch of different providers.
So my idea is this:
Create a content aggregation site that is add free. You can subscribe to this single service, and the service will then serve you content without ads. I am thinking there could be two different subscription models:
1. You pay a flat monthly fee, similar to Apple Music. We track what articles you read in a given month, then take your fee and pay each of the sources of content based on how much you sourced from that provider. If the monthly fee is $19.99, then we take a cut (say 20%), then the remainder ($16) gets divided among all the content providers you accessed, based on how many times you accessed each of them.
2. There is no monthly fee, but you have to register, and each time we serve you content, you are charged a nominal fee. We take a cut of that, and send the rest on to the content provider.
The deal however, is that you will never, ever, see an ad. This is straight up you paying for content - the consumer is the customer, rather than the consumer being the content for the advertisters as the customer.
You could even get the "free" content providers involved. You want to see CNN without any ads? No problem, subscribe to our service, and you can have CNN ad free - you just have to be willing to pay CNN some nominal fee that they would have gotten from an advertiser rather than from you.
We could setup maximum monthly charges for the ala carte service.
Thoughts?
One key, of course, would be getting enough content providers to buy in to make it a reasonable source of news and information.
But thiningk about this, this is how *I* wish I could get my news. Some service that at a reasonable price can charge ME for the content, rather than using me as a product to sell the advertisers.
I will never pay for news. Full stop. Advertisements are ok.
I think this method would just lead to more clickbate. Especially since their cut is reliant on you clicking their article. Normal internet ads already add to this problem, but at least with a dedicated subscription to a news site the revenue is more or less guaranteed.
Quote from: HVC on November 10, 2019, 08:05:45 PM
I think this method would just lead to more clickbate. Especially since their cut is reliant on you clicking their article. Normal internet ads already add to this problem, but at least with a dedicated subscription to a news site the revenue is more or less guaranteed.
Either ads or master subscription encourage clickbaits, but there is one big difference: people are going to be a lot more pissed off when they're taken by clickbait on the service they pay for.
Curating news/content is a valuable service. What you are suggesting has the advantage of corresponding to the ongoing disaggregation that is already happening, i.e., that people would rather read one article about a topic that pops up - regardless of the source - rather than a full publication. Such curation already happens, however, if inadvertently, as people get their news from FB and others, that are curated to their browsing history and clicks, without much conscientious input. Or as is happening through Apple News. I don't know how individual publications would answer such a model, nor if it could work across the existing sharing platforms. Whether or not this service would attract customers, I don't know.
Who here would to a service that worked like this?
Say the pay monthly model is $24.99, and that got you pretty much unlimited access to all the major publications, ad free.
Or you could pay $.49 per article read, but you would be billed monthly on a pre-confirmed credit card.
That's too much. People won't pay more than 15$/month, tops.
Quote from: Monoriu on November 10, 2019, 08:02:15 PM
I will never pay for news. Full stop. Advertisements are ok.
You never pay for anything but hard drives for your animes :P
Quote from: Monoriu on November 10, 2019, 08:02:15 PM
I will never pay for news. Full stop. Advertisements are ok.
[Goblin voice] "Time is money, friend."
Quote from: viper37 on November 11, 2019, 03:27:55 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on November 10, 2019, 08:02:15 PM
I will never pay for news. Full stop. Advertisements are ok.
You never pay for anything but hard drives for your animes :P
That's not really true :P But there is no way I am going to pay for news post internet. The majority of news sites are free, and they aren't too bad as far as advertisements go. If some sites have advertisements that are too annoying, I can easily switch to other free sites.
Mono is not the tArget audience
But who is the target audience?
If it's people who consume the news casually, i.e., people who see articles being advertised on their social media, 30$ is much, much too high. The value of curation is probably too murky and the annoyance of the ads is probably too low, to justify such a price.
If it is people who really enjoy the news, enough to pay, my sense is that Zoupa is right: 30$ a month is still too high, much higher than the price of a single subscription to a full newspaper. And while you may argue it gives full access to hundreds of newspapers, my sense is that people will behave with such a service like they do with news now: reading, more or less, the equivalent of a single newspaper, albeit spread out over dozens of different publications.
Exactly. And 15 USD is about the cost of subscription to a daily paper. Here, at least.
Mon abonnement à Libération me coute bien plus, mais ca vaut le cout :P
I've thought about something similar to this. I think the solution is to either have ads or a subscription. User's choice. That's a pretty common model. I share your aversion to ads but it appears most people do not.
The bigger value, IMO is to have all your subscriptions in one place. Also I think a curation service would be of value to a significant audience.
If they charged per article you'd still need to click an authorization to get to the article (after the fixed time cost of setting up the payment information). How is that any better than clicking out of a pop-up?
One interesting point I've seen on the UK right is that they wonder if they're losing the "battle of ideas" because the right-wing papers are all paywalled and used to have quite vibrant and free comment/blog sections. By contrast the Independent is funded by ads and the Guardian have subscribers (who "support" the Guardian's journalism) but no paywall.
QuoteAmong the many way it sucks, is that the user experience is terrible. The ads are annoying.
Yep. There are a number of local papers in the UK that are barely useable because of the ads.
Also from an EU perspective there is a big question of whether the current ad-tech environment is legal.
The primary target audience, IMO, is people who right now subscribe to one of the main pay subscription news sources. I think I pay $10/month to the NYT. I would be willing to pay double that, if I can get access to all of them.
I don't know if $25 is too much, but I am thinking that would be the minimum to make it viable. I'm not sure that is true - maybe it could work at $20?
Maybe it cannot work at all. I don't know if the NYT, as an example, would be interesting in risking losing the people who are paying the $10/month.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 11, 2019, 03:19:28 PM
If they charged per article you'd still need to click an authorization to get to the article (after the fixed time cost of setting up the payment information). How is that any better than clicking out of a pop-up?
I would set it up so that you pre-approve a certain amount of expenditure that you would not have to click per article. Maybe you buy a bulk number of credits, so no need for a per article authorization.
The advantage over this than just going to CNN.com is, like I said, the CNN.com content without any ads, anywhere. Basically, you pay CNN directly, instead of indirectly through an advertiser.
Ideally, something like this would become pervasive enough that maybe we could get out of the advertising model for journalistic income entirely.
There is press reader, 30$/month, IIRC:
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/le-journal-de-montreal/20191112 (https://www.pressreader.com/canada/le-journal-de-montreal/20191112)
You can see a lot of newspapers in their "scanned" version.
(https://ibb.co/TRp3T67)
There are "hotspots" in some public places, like libraries, where you can use it for free.
It is not what you are specifically talking about, but it is a similar service.
On a somewhat related topic, Jimmy Wales launched a social networking site to compete with Facebook and Twitter that operates on donor supported, zero advertising model. Will not be affiliated with Wikipedia but the funding model will be similar.
They are not just newspapers anymore, they are branded multimedia platforms, with print, video, podcast and social media annexes (among other things). Reach is global. More people outside the UK consume the Guardian then domestically. Just for example. CBC, BBC, NYT, Al Jazeera, WSJ, many others of course, in the same boat.
Some of the best newspapers don't even have print editions, which is a huge legacy cost. Online start ups like Canadaland fund everything they do on Patreon. But the Globe and Mail has a printing contract they cannot and will not break, and a core of loyal and intelligent but aging readers who read every word of the dead tree pulp that arrives at their doorstep every morning. G&M cannot afford to lose those readers for another decade.
I agree a nonprofit model is the best way to go. But the revenue has to be high enough to pay journalists to do the work, notably the investigative side, but also to sustain knowledgeable beat reporters. Yadayada. It's a tough business, lots of competition, all trying to figure out how to make the internet pay for them.