I really dislike ad driven publications. I’m not opposed to paying for quality news publication, but for something like NYT, there’s only a couple articles a month I come across that I’m really interested in reading. There problem is that there’s 4-5 other paywalled publications where I have that same issue. I’m interested in their content, I just can’t justify the subscription price for the small amount of content from them I’ll actually consume, and I really can’t justify paying subscriptions for 4-5 publications at once.
I would pay $5-10 a month for a news aggregator for paywalled publications. It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles, it could be opened up to independent writers as well (e.g. integrate your substack with it). Maybe even an additional fee that includes digital magazine publications as well.
I can’t imagine it would be worse for the industry (unlike Spotify), as it already seems like journalism/news is hovering above collapse. They would be making money off of people who weren’t providing revenue previously.
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There is. It’s called Apple News+
I use this, it’s quite good. No complaints about it, no ads, reading articles doesn’t feel like a chore. I definitely recommend it
It should be noted that, in the US at least, your library card will often give you online access to many publications.
My entire state has access to NYT, Chicago tribune, USA today, a ton of other popular newspapers and our local newspaper through their libraries for free.
Time for a library card.
Are u fr why don’t they say this in school man that’s awesome
Check out Kanopy and Libby while you’re at it.
I mean this isn’t exactly the answer you’re looking for but in the UK we do, the BBC doesn’t have ads and the cost is covered by taxes rather than paying a “Spotify premium” subscription
I think this would actually drive shittier quality.
Current models, like the preceding model of physical paper delivery, have a relatively fixed income stream from the subscriber base. They make the same amount of money whether the news day is “Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor” level or whether the most interesting story is that a German Shepherd won the AKC dog show.
Under a service that aggregates and pays a minor amount per click, how does NYT stand out above WaPo? Or Ap or Reuters? Click bait headlines and incomplete stories so they can write multiple and get more clicks, because each click is not worth very much.
I think the better model for NYT et al would be to offer a punch card like option: 10 articles, $15… or whatever. They should have enough data to determine what the average number of articles read is, per subscriber, to determine what the tipping point is, and capture some new pay-as-you go subscribers.
This seems like a direction https://ground.news/ could go in.
I agree the convenience would be great. But the reason it’s rare is that the business model does not work out for the newspapers.
This would lead to reduced revenue for the newspapers.
We already live in the world where news is behind paywall and disinformation is free. This would lead to collapse of more newspapers and further deterioration of the landscape.
We need a better model than Spotify to apply to news.
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Because good journalism is expensive and the space is so much more competitive in the digital age. Also greed, usually it’s greed preventing us from having good things.
Something reasonably close but not exactly that would be feedly
I think Inkl does exactly what you want
It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles
This is idea behind the BAT token and the Brave Browser¹. Unfortunately it won’t break through paywalls, but ad blocking is pretty good and in theory is less guilt.
¹ although, there is this
