Turns out being a place for journalism and continuously losing money over time is not a sustainable model.
It can be called throwing everything away to turn a profit but not many people are interested in supporting journalism when it actually costs them money - consumers aren’t interested in paying, journalists aren’t interested in donating their time to work for free, and investors aren’t interested in donating their money to give away the journalism for free.
Its a negative feedback loop. Journalism revenue dropped when the internet became popular, so news companies sqeezed their remaining paid customers even harder (more ads, higher subscriptions, more anti-consumer tactics). As a result, even more people dropped off and the news companies once again responded by making things worse.
Similar to streaming vs. piracy (people were glad to pay for Netflix when it was GOOD), I still believe the root of the issue lies primarily with the service being offered.
I’d like to pay for more news, but I know the second I get a subscription I’m going to get junk mail and harassment from that company for the rest of my life to upgrade what I’m already paying or resubscribe. As a result, I only donate to small outlets that treat their readers well.
I think outlets like Apple News+ or Artifact are the only solution to this. People don’t want to keep up with twenty different news site subscriptions, or navigate around ad-ridden websites to get their news. Aggregators with a flat fee to unlock paywalled content, where the news site gets a cut seems the way to go.
Turns out being a place for journalism and continuously losing money over time is not a sustainable model.
It can be called throwing everything away to turn a profit but not many people are interested in supporting journalism when it actually costs them money - consumers aren’t interested in paying, journalists aren’t interested in donating their time to work for free, and investors aren’t interested in donating their money to give away the journalism for free.
Its a negative feedback loop. Journalism revenue dropped when the internet became popular, so news companies sqeezed their remaining paid customers even harder (more ads, higher subscriptions, more anti-consumer tactics). As a result, even more people dropped off and the news companies once again responded by making things worse.
Similar to streaming vs. piracy (people were glad to pay for Netflix when it was GOOD), I still believe the root of the issue lies primarily with the service being offered.
I’d like to pay for more news, but I know the second I get a subscription I’m going to get junk mail and harassment from that company for the rest of my life to upgrade what I’m already paying or resubscribe. As a result, I only donate to small outlets that treat their readers well.
I think outlets like Apple News+ or Artifact are the only solution to this. People don’t want to keep up with twenty different news site subscriptions, or navigate around ad-ridden websites to get their news. Aggregators with a flat fee to unlock paywalled content, where the news site gets a cut seems the way to go.