So I get ads are terrible, obviously. I run ad-blockers all the time. But people also get angry at paywalls. So that leaves me wondering, if not through ads or subscriptions, how is a news publisher supposed to sustain itself?
Publicly funded
I’m ready to be wrong but isn’t that what the associated press is for?
No, AP isn’t publicly funded. You might be thinking of NPR and/or PBS and/or VOA.
Good question. What pisses me off is that all these websites want $9.99 monthly subscription while I want to read a single article. There’s no viable micropayment system where I could pay 10 cents for one article access
I wish that was possible too but if you pay by card, they gotta pay like 30 cents for each transaction
Well it can be done with crypto, but noone dares to try
By doing good enough journalism that people want to pay for it.
Sadly, this appears to be an unreachable bar for most.
I get my access to most of my news through my local library. My library card comes with access to NYT, WaPo, and the Seattle Times, amongst others. I pay my taxes, my library pays a deal with the news site, and everyone’s happy. Seems like a good setup to me.
Hmm, I’ll have to check what my library system has available. Ty. Another one of those things you forget about if you’re not a regular user.
Go back to the way things were. Static ads that aren’t obnoxious and topical to the article or audience of the site might keep the few that haven’t turned on adblockers from doing so. Engage users, don’t insult them and get your demographics by opt-in surveys. Offer subscriptions that give benefits. Ask for donations. These things are all possible. Maybe get rid of some C suite types and keep your organization small and lean and just pay the journalists and editors (and support staff that actually create the content/keep the blinky lights on).
To hell with the megacorps and ad execs that have ruined the internet.
A percentage is funded by a local media budget as long as they maintain fair and accurate news coverage designed to inform the public. The rest can be subscriptions and ad partnerships. Like they can write an promotional piece and mark it as so and be paid for that.
The news article should be free to read. After all it’s only text and it was written to be read. Ads greatly detract from the whole experience.
My proposal for a new model of news would be to be able to create an account for a one time fee of $5, which allows you to comment on articles for $0.25 per comment. Users who are logged in are also allowed to tip articles they enjoy, with proceeds going at least 50% to the author. Another option would be to hide or blur all images on articles unless the user pays $0.25. I think this model could make money, and allow customers to pay as you go and support the content they want more of. A regular subscription is a blank check for them to publish anything.
Donations.
I don’t find subscriptions too offensive, however any kind of restriction of the flow of information (e.g. by paywalling it) implies its enforcement. What are you going to do about people bypassing the paywall? Even if you only responded by patching whatever allowed them to bypass the paywall, you’re either going to have to let up eventually, or get into a protracted cat-and-mouse game with paywall bypassers. And you don’t want to end up on the side of the people who want to gatekeep information.
So that leaves us with the possibility of having a subscription that’s not stringently enforced—in which case it is just a recurring donation anyway.
Of course, this discussion is limited to the scope of “what would a news outlet do without changing anything about society”—but the decent news outlets do also try to change things about society. Within capitalism, things like UBI would make it much easier for free journalism to exist. And of course this problem goes away entirely with capitalism.
I dunno, but it’s not like this.
I’ve tried supporting multiple news sites, but it’s always something. Like the site just crashing before I can get to pay, or an endless captcha, or my credit card being rejected as sussy, but the credit card company claims they haven’t declined anything. I’ve tried multiple credit cards, multiple computers, Firefox and Chromium, always the same.
The Onion is the closest thing to news I successfully paid for.
Ive heard all kinds of cope before but “I would pay them but they dont accept my payments” is wild. Hundreds of millions of people around the world figured out how to pay for their news but somehow you are unable to no matter what you try. My 80 year old grandma can subscribe but somehow you are completely unable to. You’ve gotta agree that sounds pretty suspect.
Maybe the solution is some Spotify like service for journalism. Ie. Pay $20 a month and get access to most papers, and the revenue is split by view count. Even better would be making it a tax so since everyone is paying there’s no need for login.
The NYT has this model, but everything in the subscription is in-house. Their games are so popular they have a small fee games only subscription now too.
I really like your idea.
A local website shows article comments to everyone, but to make one you have to subscribe. The comments are mostly boomer rage bait.
By selling papers?
Worked for centuries.
What do you think a subscription is? Or do you really think people are going to go back to buying physical papers?
from ad clicks. the MSM ones are just pure propaganda machine, so they are funded by the owners, through ads despite not making profits, its just to convey mostly propaganda.
Normalize product placements in reports /s
People need to get used to paying for things online.
If more people are willing to do it, the cheaper it can be for each of us.If your news is free, it’s trying to sell you something.
