There are so many ads that interfere with reading the content that I gave up halfway through. Are we as the internet community going to continue this strategy of appeasement with the ad industry?
- engineers
- hosting fees
- office rent
- other staff and expenses
The list goes as:
- a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶t̶i̶s̶i̶n̶g̶
- subscription (around 2% will pay) http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/newsonomics-10-numbers-on-t...
- sell merchandising (might pay coffee budget)
- ???
I wonder: do you imply we should make an effort to help all struggling businesses we encounter all the time, or only the ones that do bad things?
The reality may be "No, get another job journalists, the world does not value your contribution in any economically meaningful way."
I have actually two idea that might help transform from advertising:
- sponsored content (I know, it's still advertising, but better), like more PR articles and in depth interviews of product creators. that can't be easily blocked and has some value.
- transforming the brand focus to journalists instead of the main brand. For example I don't really know any New York Times journalists by name, I know a few from the tech sector, but also few. Medium did this in a way, but that's out of control because anyone can share any bullshit there. The solution should be in between, like people would say instead there's a great New York Times article, "John von Foo updated his page on the Times network". The design would also author focused and brands would act as a quality filter.
The last thing aggrandizers of their own words need to be doing is giving me any reason to remember how unnecessary they are to me.
While a different industry, Patreon and Twitch subscriptions seem to work for a lot of people. Although that usually involves only a single person at a time, it is probably at least worth considering to have this option as a content provider these days, as there is definite proof people are willing to pay for content they enjoy.
Even, or maybe especially, if they don't have to. It's a choice to help the creators they care about and enjoy. Not about buying themselves free from ads or whatever.
My personal opinion is that now would be a good time to go down that route.
Perhaps the corporate, 'professional' model of media is simply not viable. Maybe Patreon might work with this, with the future 'journalists' not being corporate employees, but freelancers paid by their fans and the public to report the news.
2% of what? If I'm reading the article you link correctly, those 2% are also the only people who get access to non-paywall content.
I just closed the page and going by your comments I'm glad I did.
NoScript kept me from seeing this or the ads.
The doubly ironic thing would be that the article is mostly about how this is the sort of Hitler comment we should be most annoyed with.
Problem solved.
On a side note, the "but we deserve to get paid!" argument is quickly falling on deaf ears. Your company wants to control how my browser renders markup, the answer to which is a hearty GFYS. You want to place an ad or two to cover costs.. fine. You want to abuse my bandwidth, security, and attention? Nah.