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.
It’s not just ads. It’s ads that cover what you want to see. Popups that intentionally trick people into clicking on it when they are trying to close it. Hiding the X. Having subtle ‘click to read more’ instead of scrolling down into ad slop.
Let me read the fucking article without being harassed and bombarded. Let’s not pretend like this is a binary ads / no ads concern. When ads are predatory and take up the majority of the space, don’t act like you’re a victim trying to make a buck. There’s a long way to go from hosting ads on your site to making the experience as ad-intrusive as possible, which seems to be the goal
(The generic ‘you’ is used. I don’t know what website this post is referring to and am not calling them out specifically)
Mining crypto on visitors’ machines. (/s)
Idk but people seemed more okay with paying for a physical item… like newspapers, rather than just words on a page that they cant touch…
I remember my dad used to read newspapers, now he just scrolls WeChat…
(But then again the newspapers he used to read in China were all state-approved anyways… not really the beacon of truth…)
By doing good enough journalism that people want to pay for it.
Sadly, this appears to be an unreachable bar for most.
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.
Whatever it is they’ll just end up putting ads back in later anyway
Buzzfeed News used to be high quality journalism, funded by ad driven low quality Buzzfeed content. I am not sure if it was financially sustainable since they had to do layoffs, but I think partially that could be because Buzzfeed’s audience moved to Instagram and TikTok and stopped interacting with “Which Game of Thrones character are you?” quizzes.
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?
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.
People feel inundated by “the news,” so the desire to pay for a single news outlet to add more noise feels opposite to what I want, even though it would probably be helpful.
We almost need blog rings to come back - almost like spotify of news. Every publisher on the platform is verified, is fully transparent about their biases, and I pay a monthly subscription to read all of them. That monthly could get split based on my actual reading habits perhaps.
I don’t know the right answer - but just offering more “the news” isn’t the right play and will continue to be an adblocker fight. The product offering has to fundamentally change into “the news + <thing>,” where <thing> is either a lot of trust, or transparency, or something that creates the value proposition in the buyer/reader’s mind.
It would be helpful to understand fully WHO you want to subscribe to your thing - that whole “if you build for everyone you’re actually building for no one” conundrum is applicable here too.
Subscripttion services for actual journalism?
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
Honestly if I had a “tap to pay” concept for articles or news, but only AFTER I’ve read the article, I’d do it more.
I’m not going to sign up for you substack. I don’t want a subscription. I’ll give money if that I consumed was interesting or relevant to me.
Huh, I came here to say the opposite. If people were similar to me, a weak paywall is exactly right
I hate the idea of paying per article: I don’t know the value at the time nor do I know whether they’re trustworthy. If something posted here isn’t readable without pay, I’m not reading it.
However I do recognize news sources the I find useful, that are high quality, that are likely to have more well done news, and i do subscribe to a couple
On the other hand I also pay a news aggregator and have no idea how their sources are paid. Do they get a cut per article I read? Is it effectively advertising where they offer teaser articles and hope to sell me a subscription?
Edit: it’s a mix of revenue
Apple News publishers earn revenue through a combination of ad placements and subscription fees, with payment models favoring those who use Apple News Format (ANF) and generate high engagement. Key revenue streams include selling their own ads (100% of revenue), utilizing Apple-sold “backfill” ads (70% revenue), and receiving a portion of Apple News+ subscription revenue based on total time spent reading.
Imo, the problem would be easier with more frictionless payment methods.
But the real issue is that fewer and fewer people are reading at all, or have the attention span for a quality newspaper article. So you are getting fucked at both ends - no one is paying for the product, and they arent using the product anymore anyway. I certainly know my personal consumption of long form writing has dropped off over the last decade.
