Newspapers don’t need a special law to help compete with Google and Facebook

Or their websites actively scare you off, like the San Francisco Chronicle, which hits me with 3 modal pop-ups in a row every time I try to read one of their articles. If I was ever inclined to pay them I most certainly am not now.

I feel like the technical quality of the writing has degraded over time as well. With all the staff cuts, copy editors were apparently some of the first to go, and you can really tell.

> I still don't get this.

Lobbyism can be quite profitable. Why invest money in improving your website when you can invest it in lobbying for a law that gets you a better return on investment?

Nothing can fix the fact they lost their captive audience. The same could be said for "nationwide" papers and even the the big broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Foxnews.

The internet checks them all and then tops it with letting you choose as many of the big players or none. If anything it has shown to many just how bias news sources can be which means customers who previously had no real choice are not held back anymore.

They need to up their game, be damn sure to publish journalistic pieces and not editorials under the guise of them. If they lost the trust of their core audience they will need to actively focus on rebuilding it and that takes time and may not even be possible for some.

* as others have mentioned some sites are just atrocious either with ad spam or just bad formatting. I do know when my father sends me links from AJC that I cannot view them on my phone as it cuts off half the page but they work fine on the iPad. Its like the link specified the view port size.

Ok, say you strip away all of the syndicated content. How much unique content is fair to expect from a local newsroom. They aren’t anything like content mills. Some stories take 9+ months to develop. They sometimes inform law enforcement and often change the state of the world in very significant ways. I’ve spent the last year as a technologist in a newsroom and I am in awe of how remarkable an impact a big story can have on the real world. It’s hard work, and I’ve turned down job opportunities for literally double what I’m making because I believe in the cause of journalism so deeply. I see what vile hated that they have to endure every day, and try like hell to keep them safe from a myriad of digital adversaries.

The advertising business model demands attention; it’s the only way to assure value for advertisers. Its been the enemy of media integrity for over a hundred years. In our market-worship society we collectively place little value on honestly, and the numbers back that up. Since 2000, over 270,000 newsroom employees have lost their jobs. Despite all the hubbub, only about 25K coal jobs have disappeared in the same timeframe. It’s as if we have ceded verification of truth to a UI provided by a private corporation that is managed by AI systems, instead of other people. Oops.

Unless society supports people being able to dedicate their lives to uncovering truths and righting abuse, ‘speaking truth to power’ there won’t be people that can devote the energy and resources to do that well enough to have a meaningful impact.

Strip away the wire services and the ads and the articles that pay the bills in traffic for a moment. How do we compensate people to do good work on a story that might change the world for the better, or invest all of their valuable skill towards something that doesn’t lead anywhere of immediate value. There are membership models, tipping, merchandise, but what is the right way to pay for this type of work? For most people it isn’t a gig, and not something they can do on demand in a real time marketplace. For most people they just decide to dedicate themselves to that kind of work and go all in, and the best way to pay talented people according to the market is to pay them decent salaries and give them benefits. Only when a journalist can meet their basic needs for living can they devote their attention to fighting the impossible battles they face in the public sphere.

So how does the organization that provides that security for journalists get compensated outside of advertising or state sponsorship?

If we could craft something more beautiful to give to our grandkids, what would it look and feel like?

Asking for a friend.

That’s not a cartel, cartels by definition have pricing power.

That example is like saying people who collaborate on a github repo have pricing power.

Finally - the main advantage of newspapers was being able to keep reporters paid and independent.

Today, all news is victim of the news cycle effect and if you aren’t buzzfeed you are either the winner of the network effect or dead.

The network effect was recognized as bad for society as a whole, but the internet has made information gathering subservient to ad clicks.

If this version of the information hunter gatherer society, where people must venture onto the net and hope they aren’t going to eat compromised information, is appealing then sure, let’s lay the blame on the medium.

Or maybe the government shouldn't pick winners in the market. I am a subscriber to the Wall Street Jpirnal because they produce high-quality content which is significantly less biased than other major mewspapers. I figure if it gets bad enough, much of the media goes out of business. This leads to a higher demamd leads to more and better news.

Indeed, I'd argue there are you tube broadcasters with high-quality reporting, often better than traditional media.

Also, have you considered the environmental impact of subsidizing use of paper? Why can't it be digital? I subscribe only to the digital version of the WSJ. This has the added benefit of being cheaper for consumer and publisher, increasing demand.

It's possible to have high quality public news sources.

In the US the government mainly attacks them by defunding them (or attempting to).

Maybe readers aren't the customers and newspapers are actually selling narrative control.

Yep. Same with pretty much every other business that asks for law changes, bailouts, etc. If you can't compete, then that means change your business model or go out of business. It's how capitalism works.

And that should be true of everything from media outlets to banks to farmers to car manufacturers and shops.

I think news orgs are a special case though. Treating them like regular corporations and letting them profit-seek without regulation is how you end up with Fox News and co.

I see comments like this a lot, but I rarely see proposed alternative business models. The only one I can think of off-hand is ProPublica. Anyone else got anymore? I'm sometimes afraid that the reason newspapers don't pivot to any other structure is because there really aren't any viable models outside of subscriptions (which very few people pay for) or advertisements (which just makes for a sucky experience).

As it's often said, the mission of journalists is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Making people feel uncomfortable is of course a lousy way of staying competitive.

It's probably more likely that at such a scale, setting up your own reporter network becomes much cheaper.

A fee for linking is a stupid idea. Sites pay for backlinks, not the other way around. Because they can then run their own ads and make money. Were I google, I would just blacklist these sites and they would die. Sites wouldn't have much recourse; good luck suing on antitrust grounds in such a situation.

> Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or whatever. How does that play out?

We don't have to speculate! It happened in Spain.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9f7fmj/this_is_how_...

Google shut down their news product in Spain. Full stop.

Why do you think newspaper cartels will give you a vigorous free press? Historical evidence suggests that is not the case.

Unfortunately, I think the people have spoken and they clearly favor Googbook-bait listicles over a vigorous free press.

Local news TV has been infamously consolidated to conglomerates and often clearly makes a mission to do as little journalism as possible - often overreporting one story in development with speculation and forgetting about the actual resolution.

You do see some good work in complaints forwarding "name and shame" occassionally where they pressure for resolution about bueracratic failures and dodgy businesses fixing the situation as it is the easiest way to make the problem go away.

If they aren't making money through clickthroughs somehow (subscriptions, ads, or donations) they are frankly doing it wrong and deserve to be out of business because they don't know what the hell they are doing.

Is there any field where you need to pay to advertise someone else? That is abject insanity even if it "worked" it would be a death spiral as short term gaind peter out as nobody wants to mention you.

No, Goog takes 32% if you're a nobody. I think it's 50% on YouTube. Who knows what heavier hitters get.

If you're big enough, you can do direct deals with big enough advertisers and low-level geo-targeting.

Google Ad != Appstore App

Where are you getting that number from?

   isn't in the public's interest

I, for one, would be very interested to see how that plays out. :P

Why wouldn't breaking up Google and Facebook be in the interest of the public?