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Comment by zem | Hacker News Reader

i found this bit really depressing:

> Our technology group tends to work thematically, meaning that we try to focus on how tech is changing our readers’ work and personal lives. Google is the main focus of my reporting, and it is a brutally competitive beat. It takes me an hour to go through the day’s headlines each morning, and there are dozens of competitors and talented journalists on the tech beat. That means I’m often scooped, and the scrum of daily news can make it hard to see the bigger picture.

if the new york times cannot take an extra day or two to get a good, comprehensive and well-put-together story without worrying about the churning techblogs scooping them, who can? there has to be space for slower-moving newspaper articles, without having to fall all the way back to magazines.

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The whole business model of journalism seems broken. I'd love to see a crowd-funded journalism portal that takes the 'patreon' model and extends it to a stable of well-trained independent journalists and provides them with an overall support structure of editorial oversight, illustration & layout support, etc, etc.

In place of advertisement, the portal could run their own messaging to fund various initiatives (raise x amount in order to bring on a tech reporter for x number of articles a year, etc, etc). Users could choose to fund specific reporters at x amount per month, or just donate directly to the portal for day-to-day operational expenses.

This exists via Bloomberg. Their $26k p.a. terminals subsidize the journalism.

I haven't found another general interest news org whose journalists take the time to actually understand the industry they cover. One could argue that it's run by a billionaire politician, yet it stays much less partisan than say, the NYT.

That said, these days the best content comes from single-beat sources.

There is that: http://beaconreader.com

caveat: i'm one of the founders.

Oh wow, that's awesome! How has it been going so far? Looks like you have some momentum, what were some of the biggest challenges to overcome?

The problem with journalism is everyone wants it but hardly anyone will pay for it unless it directly helps them in some way.

So Bloomberg and the FT (trade press) have a business model, the BBC has the license fee so doesn't need a business model, and everyone else will go bankrupt slowly – note that none of the other para-news apps which were fashionable a while ago (Circa, Feedly, Google Reader, etc...) have come anywhere close to being financially valuable.

I think a lot of people like me would pay for it if there was some sensible micro-payment system. I'm hardly ever inclined to sign up and pay ~$10 a month to read an article on a site. If I saw the article in a newspaper at a stand or machine, I used to spend 50 cents buy it and get an entire newspaper for my money. A single article would seem to be worth at most 25 cents, most of the time a dime, and I would gladly pay that amount to read a good article. I don't understand what the problem is and why this isn't implemented yet.

The 'business model' of big media like the New York Times is to be grandfathered by a bunch of people who are happy to spend a lot of money for the chance to form and color people's opinions. That is infinitely more valuable than the chump change they can make from advertising and circulation, which, as is apparent, barely covers operational expenses. You can see this story play out for all big 'serious' newspapers all over the world.

The Economist is profitable.

The New Yorker consistently has in depth articles that are well researched and fact checked.

+1. New Yorker is great.

Huh, what were the aforementioned profile and this article if not slower-moving, step-back perspective type articles?

agreed, but it also referred to his google coverage being constantly subject to pressure of getting scooped. my point was that an nyt writer should not care if someone beats them to a story, they if anyone should have the luxury to trust that their readership would rather see a well-researched story than a breaking one.

They're in the news business, so scoops are always a huge driver, especially so with online news where the publication with a scoop with get a disproportionate number of PVs on a story. The NYT doesn't get to escape from that logic; it just gets to play on both slow/smart and fast/quick hit grounds.

The Guardian for one? I agree it's becoming more rare to see real journalism, and that's sad...which is why it's important to point out the ones who still do it.

good point, i continue to be impressed by the guardian.

Their iPhone app is superb, a few £s a year and you get access to all their stories in an intuitive format. Well worth it.

CSM all the way.

> who can?

there's still demand for quality investigative journalism, it just has to be right-sized away from bloated megacorps.

The SPIEGEL can.

But they are only a weekly magazine, and get almost all their readers through permanent subscriptions.

(And like most newspapers, they have a handful of people standing everywhere on university campuses, trying to sell people subscriptions)

Note that the crew working there is different from the www.spiegel.de crew and the quality of the weekly magazine is said to be much better (I am not a subscriber though)

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