National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The Internet and capitalism don't make a good cocktail.
Then I see this:
> The cutback — the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co.
It's sad that National Geographic is effectively closing its doors when it's owned by Walt Disney Co., which has yearly revenue of nearly $100 billion. They seriously can't find the miniscule amount of cash in there to support National Geographic's journalism? Walt Disney is one of the most evil and exploitative companies ever, so I suppose I'm not surprised by their actions here.
> National Geographic spokesperson Chris Albert said staffing changes will not affect the company’s plans to continue publishing a monthly magazine
If they don't employ writers, then who is going to be writing the magazine?
Well there is always chatGPT
I anticipate the opposite.
Already AI content is better than crappy human writers.
In the medium term AI content is going to be better than most human writers (it arguably already is in some limited cases).
In the long term it may compete with the best human writers.
Some humans are too full of themselves, thinking they're so exceptional, while computers are proving time and again that's not so. The evidence is starting us in the face.
That doesn’t mean that LLMs are on a course to inevitably surpass the 90th percentile human writer (which is what most full-time writers presumably are). I may be a Luddite here, but I don’t expect that in my young kids’ lifetime.
If writing is our best attempt to share our personal psychic experience then all LLM can be is fragments of those experiences and can not in itself experience the presence of being that is human.
> Some humans are too full of themselves, thinking they're so exceptional, while computers are proving time and again that's not so. The evidence is starting us in the face.
Thanks for daring to state this unpopular opinion. I completely agree that humans have a very poor (and hence inflated) idea of what they are good at, because they have only had animals and (recently) machines to compare themselves to, plus these opinions formed long ago are a very firmly held cultural memory (e.g. literary and movie tropes, religion). Creativity being IMO one of the most badly misclaimed abilities.
It sure is!
I do think people are going to get tired of AI-produced this and AI-produced that - they're going to crave content created by humans. At least for some things. There may be a place for AI-created content that we love. That is this whole thing might be a false dilemma, it's not AI or human created content, it's AI and human created content. We'll find out which is better at what.
Well, over half of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level[1], so it seems like AI content is satisfactory, given the median reading skills.
Past tense. It has failed. It's not failing.
There's a good chance that people who read that magazine have a higher average reading level.
It has happened the same way in every areas where you have rampant counterfeit or simply cheaper competition.
As even if LLM can generate greate quality content, it will always be even cheaper to mass produce low quality. And once you cross the Rubicon of not being certified, it is just a matter of time that capitalism/greed will make it a race to the bottom.
*This was written with an AI, and I told it to be spicy, salty and smarmy.
So all new discoveries will get walled off from the GPTs and we will be stuck with constantly regurgitated old information unless you go looking in paid for publications.
Random freelancers on the cheap, with no/less content that needs serious preparation and months/year-long support to create.
I would love to freelance write for a software magazine while being a professional software engineer.
Great bloggers, vloggers and pod casters are the new great journalists.
Yeah what we have today is not capitalism, at least by Adam Smith's standard, and definitely not the capitalism that was practiced between the end of WW2 and Reagan.
The US desperately needs to bring their anti-trust enforcement back to the standards of the post-war era
Want money to build weapons and blow up some people outside the US? Sure no problem! Want money to recuperate from the massive investment losses your bank or company incurred due to your bad decisions? Sure no problem!
Want another $30 a month for your social security disability check to account for inflation? Nah we can’t do that!
I shudder to think.
Once it was actually a part of the prestigious National Geographic Society, a non-profit. Now what's left of nationalgeographic.com is mostly a giant advertisement for Disney+. They even have Buzz Lightyear and Star Wars characters on there...
fwiw i think the deterioration has been much more clear under natgeo tv than the magazine
Nothing at all to hint I'm on nationalgeographic.com
A non-profit that shares ownership with Disney over a crappy for-profit media network sounds more like a once-prestigious non-profit that turned sell out. Hopefully there's something good left in them, but as much as we can blame Disney for what it has become it was the National Geographic Society that let the mouse in to trash the place and their reputation.
If your task is to complete an exhaustive statistical survey on the issue, perhaps you're right, the comment is too vague.
If your intent is (as the parent's was) to contribute to a conversation by giving an opinion on what you observe happening to US journalism industry, with some example cases to illustrate the point, it's fine.
The [US] economy is actually fine, and all they know how to do is gut their own companies to "save" money.
It was already destroyed after Fox bought it and started putting out covers with the Virgin Mary, the Real Jesus, and the Healing Value of Faith.
Once everything was 'discovered' and conglomerated into wikipedia and YouTube, there was no content left for National Geographic. They started writing articles about science news, no different than Popular Science magazine. Then the political era started, and every issue was polarizingly politicized.
I have had a subscription for decades, and I can honestly say I stopped even opening the magazine years ago. The kids just cut pictures out of it for art projects.
1,800,000 * $20
=> $36,000,000
Even so $20 per year seems impractically low. I pay ten times that for my Economist subscription. I really imagine they could strike a middle ground without losing too many subscribers.
A carload of up to 7 people is STILL only 40$. A normal cinema would be 22 ish each!! Just charge normal prices!
$20 is a lot for most families, outside of Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and a few other areas.
Economist has rich subscribers. I don't think NatGeo would be anywhere close to 1.8M with higher prices.
Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos.
I live in the Midwest. Even when I was living paycheck to paycheck in rural Minnesota, $20 per year was never a lot of money.
> Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos.
For the $200 per year I pay for The Economist I could maybe get to Chicago if I got a really good deal.
What about suburban DC? Dallas? Houston? Denver? Salt Lake City? Chicago?
Not sure if your last sentence was intended to be ironic, but there’s nowhere you can fly that’s less than an Economist subscription
Looking at allegiant’s site right now the only thing I could find for that price is a flight from Provo to Vegas
$20 around SF here is less than a couple cocktails.
I think National Geographic (which I'm a subscriber) can charge 10x more without losing 90% of it's audience. It's the price to pay to receive good articles at your home and it's definitely worth tons more than drinking and eating junk in the dark.
Every dollar counts when you're impoverished, but I don't think National Geographic is making or breaking it based on a demographic that makes purchasing decisions at that margin.
Lots of it must be schools and doctor and dentist offices.
I don’t know where you’re finding such cheap flights
I wonder where the money is going?
And I wonder how much a 1980s subscription cost (adjusted for inflation?)
>> The magazine was initially sold to the public as a perk for joining the society
Maybe that's not such a bad idea.
At the current rate, it could have like 50 full time + part-time writers on staff (let's say 90K * 50 = 4.5M - might seem low for Silicon Valley, but professional journalists and writers would jump with joy for such a gig), plus dozens of office staff (say another 2M), plus fund 24 (2 per issue) year-long big stories with like up to 100K per story (2.5M). That would be like ~10M. They could pay rent, utilities, taxes, and other expenses with the rest of 36M (or even go remote, and save even more).
You aren't going to keep the subscription base without spending a ton on marketing.
I am sure many other cost that we aren't thinking about since not in the magazine business.
To me, I am a prime example of someone who use to absolutely love magazines who could not be bothered now. There is no price that will get me to subscribe. I just don't want to be sent paper in the mail.
If you do quality work, you don't need to spend a ton on marketing. And this is very livable revenue - tons of media outlets thrived on less (inflation adjusted) back in the day.
The main problem is belonging to some conglomerate who doesn't care for such small profits or a business breaking even. They're an insect to them.
A corporation running from a non-profit dedicated to the mission (as opposed to those greedy people), or passionate private owner(s), would have no problem to continue.
Producing what National Geographic magazine does is not cheap and they have historically had much higher revenue. Nevermind that they are still continuing, just without staff writers.
Nobody said it is. But what it used to cost to run it in the times of media excess and a much larger subscriber base, is not really reflective of what it can run on and still get good stories today.
Today though photo reporting and writing is much more competitive and cheaper than it has been, even at the top. Glassdoor puts NatGeo salaries at a $65K median.
And freelancers sent on a story are paid like 20K or so for 3 weeks salary plus expenses (for Americans. Regional freelancers can usually be paid even less). That makes 5 such stories per issue at 1.2M (internal editing, processing etc is already covered by regular staff, as is more generic articles that are not in the field assignments).
>even when presented with basic numbers.
Where are those "basic numbers"?
If quality of the magazine deteriorates, I will cancel my membership. If the price goes up by 20%, I don't think I'll even notice.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/helpcenter?path=s/article...
The kinds of articles NatGeo writes are so spread across the world and really benefit from a diverse set of authors including local/regional/expert ones.
It seems to me that 100 articles on 100 different topics across the globe might be much better written by 100 different freelance authors rather than the same 19.
Regular news publications generally benefit from staff writers who have many years of experience on a particular beat. But NatGeo feels like it's on the opposite end of the spectrum, where all-freelance makes a lot of sense. It means many more voices rather than fewer.
You would think that but that hasn't really happened. The magazine had a point of view and editorial standpoint that people appreciated. What you are suggesting is basically what we get from digital outlets today.
A magazine which fires all its writers is not looking for quality, it's looking to cut costs.
Meet audiences where they are on platforms, with different stories… presumably different from what it’s known for?
Sounds a lot like flushing the remainder of the brand down the same mass-market toilet as everything else, or wanting to dump the whole “property” but not wanting to give up on the last dying gasping pennies of revenue.
Which other business fired their employees and outsourced their work to become better? Approximately, or even absolutely, none.
The magazine was eventually surpassed for profits and attention by the society’s video operations, including its flagship National Geographic cable channel and Nat Geo Wild, a channel focused on animals. While they produced documentaries equal in quality to the magazine’s rigorous reporting, the channels — managed by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox — also aired pseudoscientific entertainment programming about UFOs and reality series like “Sharks vs. Tunas” at odds with the society’s original high-minded vision."
What a trajectory for our civilization. Reminds me of the tidbit that Astronaut used to be the most named profession teens aspired to in the 70s and 80s. Now it's influencers. And don't call me old or jaded, I'm barely 30, I already grew up with ancient aliens on the 'history' channel.
That which starts well ends badly.
That which starts badly ends worse.
Why did they need a VP of DEI for such a small workforce (that they've now laid off entirely)? Seems like some poor decision making internally.
Zero COGS == infinite margins!
I’m sure they’ll figure out how to build a sustainable business put of that. /s
1) They had 1.8 million subscribers when deciding to shut down. Each subscription cost around $40, so you're looking at $70 million+ in revenue, from the magazine alone. How much does a full time of editors, photographers, reporters, and more actually cost? With many failing industries it increasingly feels like the burden is not coming from operational costs themselves, but from these enormous administrative layers which essentially just drown businesses, yet are the last to see major cuts. If you can [apparently] barely afford to fund your editors, photographers, and more - where exactly should DEI rank on your list of concerns, let alone expenditures?
2) Changes in themes tend to push people away from businesses. I actually had to check the Wiki [1] to make sure I wasn't have some sort of false memory. I wasn't: National Geographic was always an overtly anti-political magazine. For instance it was able to inspire awe about the progress being made during the space race, while sidestepping the fact it was also driving mass militarization. Or give interesting and fun cultural insights across the Iron Curtain of the "enemy" during the Cold War, without at all getting involved in the political dehumanization games of the past (and especially the present).
Now? [2] 'Elephants are in trouble and we're to blame.' 'These Native Americans were taken rom their families as children' 'Kosovo wants to decide its future - but will history hold it back?' 'This scientist analyzes African American's past to inform the present.' 'This ordinary woman hid Anne Frank.' And of course a super-sized serving of focus on typical concerns such as global warming. And I'm not cherry picking. These are literally the headline articles for just this month!? This is how you lose your readers. People don't want to be preached or lectured to about your values, or why they're the worst, most undeserving living 'things' on this planet.
I expect the National Geographic, as many of us remember it, likely died long ago. And that probably happened when the business started being bounced from one mega-corp to another.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geographic#Articles
I'm sorry, but if you manage to find offense in those topics and consider them too political and preachy, it's 100% a you problem. What exactly is political there more than an article about Chernobyl criticising the Soviet regime's incompetence and trying to lie was? Anne Frank is political and preachy? Or Kosovo's history and attempts at state building? Unless the article about African American's past says that everything wrong is the fault of XYZ living today, how is it preachy or lecturing? And honestly, you lost me at climate change. If you think that's a political topic, you're fundamentally misunderstanding the problem and are a massive part of it. Which is of course unfortunate because you consider it political preaching to try to educate you about it, and are thus immune to learning better.
The new times where in some countries any topic, including wide ones such as public health or the climate, are "political" and automatically partisan is extremely annoying.
I think what you'll find, up until fairly recently, is that the covers are full of exotic topics that by and large you probably have no clue whatsoever about. If you're the curious sort, they probably make you want to crack open those pages just to see what's going on. And I think that is what many of us really remember about National Geographic. They were taking you exploring in places and parts of the world you'd have no idea about, and just showing you things for no real motivation beyond showing neat things to you. It was kind of like being on the HMS Beagle, from the comfort of your couch. And that was a really awesome feeling.
The only time they ever really slipped hard into politics (at least at a fairly lengthy glance) was during WW2, and I think we can probably give them a pass there. Even during e.g. the 60s, with a raging Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and more - they managed to stay focused on discovery. But the new National Geographic seems to have shunned its past and largely turned to identity politics, with a healthy dishing of geopolitics on the sider, into their bread and butter. I don't find that offensive, I simply find it trite. And that's a really bad place to be in for a magazine that was, at one time, about inspiring wonder and awe.
Of course they're free to do such, but readers are also free to decide, "You know, this just isn't for me anymore."
When about do you think they made this shift? In my opinion, 2015, when Murdoch got ahold of a majority of the company, was the shift to identity, narrative, rhetoric. You seem to have a better grasp on their history than me, though.
And nothing deepens engagement with readers like eliminating your full time writers. Who doesn’t simply adore getting a different voice for every regurgitated AP news article?
Or maybe it was the colonialist taint that just doesn't sit right these days?
But... the world is still vast, and worth exploring. Maybe even moreso now we _think_ we know everything via Twitter etc.
International Geographic, anyone?
Of course, no business will run at a loss, unless it is the WBNA, which is kept alive by the NBA
https://medium.com/@yannickondoa/behind-the-figures-1-why-wn....
Too bad that they have gone the way of the dodo, but the writing has been on the wall for many years.
If the dodo genome had been torrented it would be alive today.
too soon man, too soon
I have older software on 3.5" floppy disks that I can no longer access, and fortunately have the disk images.
Not sure I'd trust my only copy of something I want to keep long term to a "usually."
It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve done anything like that though.
Edit: You can always use dd to grab the raw data.
My parents got me a subscription in 1987 when I was a kid and I'm still a print edition subscriber and linked my online account to my subscription. I can read any issue online as well and print to PDF so I do that every couple of months so I have every issue from 1888 to 2023.
All the files are named well like NGM_1918_04_125.jpg
National Geographic Magazine, year 1918, 4th month (April), page 125
Yeah, it was annoying but I ran a for loop on every file in the 80GB or so to translate it to normal JPEG. It took about 24 hours and that was 10 years ago on a much older computer.
What file format were the issues/articles?
PDF?
Something else?
I’d never seen the image on the Internet at that point. I guess it might have been published there, but viewing it in high resolution print would have been way more impressive than an SVGA CRT or whatever I was using then.
It’s sad, I think as long as its sale was funding the fieldwork people were happy to pay. But make it into a normal for profit magazine and it’s just another crass commercial effort without heart. And people voted with their wallets.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180926-akashinga-all-wo...
Amazon and Apple offer nearly free entertainment that they subsidize at a loss. Vertical media companies are trying to compete and are thus attempting to mimic the streaming model.
This is an unwinnable battle. Disney and NatGeo can't compete on price. HBO / Warner / Discovery can't either. They're being forced to awkwardly consolidate and cut costs to stem their losses while they try to serve the same customers.
Streaming is ultimately a game of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. You can't charge a big premium for sludge content, especially now that it's a commodity.
Summers full of prestige drama and blockbusters have been replaced by shovelware Bird Box sequels and shows that get launched and canceled in one season.
It's disappointing.
He's basically the only reason I subscribe...
Apple TV has some other sci-fi with not great writing like “Hello, Tomorrow” but that are still fun for the visuals and what not.
I do also like For All Mankind, although its started to get a bit silly in later seasons. Season 1 is great however.
It is inspiring to see individuals succeeding on Substack - https://growthinreverse.com/archive/ It proves that people will pay for quality content and it is possible to build a successful business. If an individual can make a million dollars a year by himself, imagine what a business can do, if only they have the discipline to produce high quality content.
In the next few years, the web is going to drown in low quality AI generated content. It would be a good time for disciplined content producers who go for quality than quantity, to make a name for themselves - individuals or businesses
Like - we have a huge writer strike right now, the second very large one in recent years. Meanwhile the CEOs and shareholders of every media company are paid multiples of what every writer gets combined. It's wildly perverse. And not Apple's fault, or even Amazon's.
nat geo magazine used to have millions of loyal subscribers.
That's not even remotely true. People pay for lots of subscription services; it's getting ridiculous. And we pay a very dear price indeed for getting blasted with ads and propaganda.
> nat geo magazine used to have millions of loyal subscribers.
And then Rupert Murdoch bought them. Immediately, people knew it would get strip mined to the bone and then sold off for parts. If anything, I'm surprised it hasn't been faster and uglier.
... If the negative externalities of advertising and propaganda were costed in, the entire media landscape would be wholly different. Most people can't even imagine how different.
The problem isn't that people aren't paying for content, it's that people are the product now; even when they pay.
I love showing my kids documentaries, but even the majority of those now are a bit unbearable with over the top voiceovers, etc.
Besides, no two people are equal.
Any media savy millennial or gen-z could build a hundred million dollar a year brand with that following alone but instead they’re posting articles about “skincare routines” and “birth control for cats” with almost zero engagement.
FYI: The long lines at the Hilary Step were because someone stopped to play Zelda on their phone.
Look at Disney, who does not make most of their content available to stream on other platforms. Their latest movies haven't been great, but compared to what they cost to make, they've absolutely bombed at the box office.
I suspect a lot of this has been because many people would rather wait a bit and let the whole family watch on disney+, rather than pay at least the cost of an entire month's worth of streaming per ticket, plus the high cost of drinks and snacks once you get in.
In my area, a family of four could easily pay $50 for tickets for a single screening. With the prices of everything going up, an $8-12 / month streaming plan on disney plus makes way more sense.
Be that as it may, you would think that a million subscribers would be enough to keep a magazine afloat.
Nothing as good as, say, 1883.
Also, ST TOS is exceptionally good. I tried watching TNG several times, and find it just unwatchable. I'm probably the only person who has polar opposite opinions of TOS and TNG.
Well, that sounds like a disaster. It’s like asking the project manager to create a program by piecing together some code.
I remember getting a spam call back in the 90s. They were trying to sell magazine subscriptions. I wasn’t interested, but when asked what magazine I liked the best I responded with National Geographic. The person on the line had never heard of it. I was honestly surprised that someone had never heard of it. They said they would ask a manager if they offered that magazine and I did wait since I was curious. They did not.
Instead, enjoy the vintage National Geographic with all the splendor of excellent travel writers.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitt...
From eliminating defined-benefit from employee pensions schemes to "not having" any employees at all, that is the name the game.
Instead of fixed contracts where the entity carries the risk of reduced revenue, just take advantage of a willing pool of competing freelancers that race to the bottom and are at the mercy of economic cycles and their very own lifecyle.
People often rail about generic "capitalism" but this is an example of the countless levers available to tune the beast so that its less of a vampire: What type of labor contracts firms can legally engage-in is a simple political / regulatory choice.
Instead of one article covering a school board meeting it gets split into one article per speaking, an article in cover why the meeting happened, an article on when they'll meet next, one interviewing the attendees, etc.
It's a tricky problem.
Produce worse articles, get less money and customers for them.
New content vendors can spring up over night, even ones doing real news or expensive trips or whatever National Geographic (or any other outlet) is into these days. And now these writers don't even have the miniscule security of at-will employment.
They are going to respond readily to incentives because there is nothing tethering them to a way of doing business. They have no anchor so they will sail any way the wind blows.
When you have the security of actually owning land and equipment or having an employment contract you can sit back and think about stuff like professionalism and integrity. As it is, fewer writers are in the position to turn down demands that they churn out crappy little dopamine hits as fast as possible.
I don't know why you say that is the thing about that, or what the implications of it being the thing are. Substitute farms and apples for any product or service. A candy bar or a bottle of beer.
I'm producing free content that's competing for your attention with National Geographic right now. If I wanted to make a beer that competed with your favorite beer it would take months (at least) and a substantial investment before the first bottle arrived at a store near you.
Additionally, competition has different effects on different products. You can compete with educational content by making content that is more educational. You can also compete with it by making content that is less educational but more fun.
The specifics really matter here.
I'm surprised there hasn't been some kind of payment aggregator for news - eg. pay some amount for articles from a number of different sources. I imagine there's some business reason that has prevented such a thing from being introduced.
I used to subscribe to The Information. They had really high quality content consistently.
But then they got greedy and introduced an even more expensive plan and moved a bunch of features to that more expensive plan, and what’s left in the lower tier (but still hundreds of $$) subscription is kinda crap.
I’m not sure I want to renew my subscription this year.
If I had the option to pay $1 each time NYT or other sources pay-walled me out, they’d have a lot of my money.
Would you be willing to pay for all content? Reading the first few 2 pages here would cost 60 dollars. Should you be paying to read everyone's comments?
Alas not enough readers used the system and it shut down. People don’t want to pay.
That happens less because they don't carry cash anymore.
It's the same thing here.
If it was easier to do, more people would do it.
Look at Onlyfans. People pay good money for what you can get for free.
That is also why the Google and apple appstores can charge such large fees. Sure, buying on websites and sideloading are possible but much higher friction -> many customers simply won't bother.
Like some sort of HTTP 402 response? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2616#section-10.4.3
I still say the web would be better than it is now, if microtransactions had been built into protocols ASAP.
Free begat ads begat tracking begat walled gardens begat centralization begat destruction of a diversity of market players
No, for dog’s sake! Microtransactions are a cancer and come with perverse incentives leading to enshitification of everything they touch. They would not solve any issue with clickbait or sensationalism. Plus, I am not going to count pennies when I read news online or manage yet another pseudo-currency.
Some kind of all-you-can-read aggregated subscription is much, much better: more reader-friendly, it comes with incentives to keep readers happy on the long term, and media don’t need to rely only on hit pieces. In fact, Apple News would be close to perfect if it weren’t siloed into its app. I’d sign up with a decent competitor in a heart beat.
It's not a business model media companies are typically too eager to be involved with in either case.
From the user’s perspective, it is one less step involved. We just have to pay x every months and not think about it. We don’t have to babysit yet another number going up or down on yet another account.
> It's not a business model media companies are typically too eager to be involved with in either case.
Yeah, and I imagine the value proposition is not great, from what we’ve seen in music streaming services. Still, for me it would be better than either paywalls or microtransactions.
I was replying more to your point that micro transactions lead to perverse incentive structures.
Perhaps an aggregated service over individual service would change the dynamic but I think many of the same incentives would remain.
Each flattr user sets how much they want to pay per month. Flattr collects the fees, and tracks which sites you visited (or which you click a button on). At the end of the month, they divide all the user's contributions between the sites visited in proportion to the numbers of visits (less a fee for themselves).
A lot of articles on the internet today aren't worth the free click I'm giving them now. A micro-transaction system is only going to work if the content is better than what we're getting today. You need to find a company who is willing to invest in high-paid professional investigative journalism and editors before you can convince people to shell out pennies to read their news online. Spotify works because the content was desirable and worth the subscription fee first.
At the same time, you also can't paywall off the content for non-subscribers. People want to share and talk about great news stories and a service should let them the same way we can listen to just about any song on youtube without paying spotify a dime. At that point, you can offer what amounts to a tip jar and an ad free experience.
A lot of articles on the internet today aren't worth the free click I'm giving them now.
the same way we can listen to just about any song on youtube without paying spotify a dime
Considering some of the articles I've seen it wouldn't be hard to do better, but you'd probably have to do better than just not being the worst to get people to pull out their wallets.
> What do you consider "high quality news source"?
Since you asked, here's what I'd look for in a high quality news source:
Low in bias/high in facts: I want to be able trust a news source not to lie or mislead me. Unverified and speculative reporting should be minimized and clearly marked as such. In emerging situations it's better to wait for facts than to publish false or misleading headlines to "get ahead of the story". Multiple perspectives should be explored. No need to give equal weight to both sides of everything, but if there are two sides to something talk about both and explore their strengths and weaknesses. Don't ignore or bury stories that offend, challenge, or fail to promote the writer's or news org's ideological views.
Give enough context/sources for informed conclusions: I've seen far too many articles about someone's controversial statement without any mention at all of what the statements were or without context to them. Same with reporting on laws where the name or text of the law isn't included anywhere. I should have enough information to form an opinion and look for additional information and sources not included in the article. If something must be quoted from social media, quote it in the story instead of just linking to it. Anonymous sources shouldn't be the entire story, just a starting point or a supporting one around verified facts.
Clear separation between ads and content: This includes press releases disguised as news stories. Once while working for a company I was poking around on their network shares and found a video of a report from a local news broadcast that talked about new services we were offering in that area. I thought it was really cool that someone had saved it, but then I read the documents included in that folder and realized that the company had hired a production company, the reporter was an actor reading ad copy written by my company, and that they'd paid local stations to air the content with no indication to the viewer that it was an advertisement. Not cool.
Independent reporting without constraint or consideration to partners/advertisers that might be inconvenienced by the truth: No killed stories because of pressure from some external corporation or industry. No killed stories because it makes the network/news org itself or their friends/partners look bad either.
Transparency: Edits and corrections are great, but the text as originally reported should always remain available and any changes made after publication should be clear and timestamped. Old stories should remain searchable and available even after years/decades. Updates, and especially corrections, should be heavily promoted. Potential conflicts of interest should be avoided if possible and disclosed otherwise.
Ethics are nice: Balance the public's right to know with the privacy of everyday people. Protect the identity of children and those innocent until proven guilty. Don't do things like hound people who are grieving for quotes, or who have expressed that they wish to be left alone. Don't hack into a missing child's voicemail
Little excessive fluff: A bit of color is fine, but I don't care what the author had for breakfast and while it's great to have specific cases as examples, I don't need paragraphs of meandering text about their personal lives either. I want information not entertainment.
Quality writing and editing: That means the people doing the work should be paid well enough that they can more than comfortably support themselves doing it. Talented and skilled people should be attracted to do the job. Reporters or editors who fail to perform to a high standard should be sacked. There are tons of people who are genuinely passionate about journalism. This should be so easy.
> And what do you read / consume? And what do you think it should cost?
The news I consume is often terrible and disappointing and my consumption is not an endorsement of the source or a reflection of their quality. I don't know enough about the costs of journalism today to put a price on it. I'd say that they should charge just enough so that their expenses are covered and they make a very modest yet sustainable profit. A news org shouldn't be attempting to maximize wealth or push to extract every possible dime out of subscribers. That leads to things like accepting money to publish or not publish something, collecting and selling the personal data of subscribers, and filling news stories with ads.
> And yet, you continue to click them.
A starving man eats out of the bin, but that doesn't mean he likes it. I get what can and do my best.
> You do pay: You are the product because adverts are shown.
Well, most people pay... I block ads. My point wasn't that nobody pays for music unless they pay spotify, just that if someone want to make "spotify for news" and offer unique and exclusive quality reporting they have to let people share it, and they should want to. It's free advertising. They should feel free to push ads on non-subscribers so long as the ads are clearly separated from content, clearly marked as ads, the ads have no influence over content, and the ads are hosted locally by the news org, not targeted to the user, and carefully vetted to be respectful to both the content and the user.
I don't think that's a very high bar. It's just basic journalistic integrity, not being greedy, and not exploiting subscribers (or potential subscribers). Is it actually sustainable in this day and age to offer high quality journalism to folks on the internet? I have no idea, but just once I'd like to see somebody try it.
[0] https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/7-facts-publishers-should-k...
But, as you say, it really hasn't taken off. A few news pubs that apparently are doing OK aside, people are an endless font of excuses about why they won't pay (or they just don't) even though many people routinely subscribed to a newspaper and a bunch of magazines.
That’s not really fair. Back when magazine subscriptions were a thing, you weren’t exposed as much to other magazines or newspapers you were not subscribed to, or if you were you could just read them. Cafés used to have newspapers, various places with waiting rooms used to have stacks of magazines and nobody tried to shame you for reading without paying.
As a matter or fact, I am subscribed to the Atlantic and 3 newspaper’s websites (in different languages), which is equivalent to what my parents did when I was a kid. But I am not going to get a subscription for the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times, or some random local news website every time someone links to a story there.
I.e instead of paying sky £30 a month and having 1/3rd of content adverts, you could pay £33 a month and have no adverts.
It’s similar with the underground in london. I pay £3 to take a journey and am plastered with adverts. Instead £3.30 and there would be no need for adverts
These companies don’t offer that as free experience though. With sky there are alternates (streaming, or if that falls to the advert curse then pirate bay), with the underground alas no alternatives.
The answers in this thread are essentially all under $1. There seems to be not much rationale behind these numbers besides "it should be cheaper," so the anchor point is probably $0.
EDIT: Bytesmith beat me to it.
[1] https://launch.blendle.com/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22417852/twitter-buying-sc...
The issue has nothing to do with the cost, or quality--instead, it is just really hard to make it part of my browsing routine.
I realized I just don't sit down and read news anymore. I obviously get into articles throughout the day from links people share, but I never sit down and think--yeah, I want to read "the news" now.
for me as user it was essential that i had access to more than 80% of the best articles of all publications for sale. as most publishers came to see that publishing their flagship articles cannibalized them selling subscriptions and eliminated their secondary revenue streams they resorted to periodically publishing only some bait articles to lure audiences to their core offers. thus the incentives of all 3 (me as user, publishers, blendle) did not align and its usefullness as a product suffered. some publishers tried to raise the price of their flagship articles to cover more of their costs, but who pays 4 EUR for a single article? so, the business model just doesnt work. enjoyed it while it lasted though
Example: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22417852/twitter-buying-sc...
Eg, consumers incur those credit card charges by topping up an online wallet. They “pay” 5 cents from that wallet itself. The news website only receives payment when the aggregated total paid to it hits a certain amount.
General epayment wallets are already widely (Grab in Singapore for instance), even with auto top up. There just isn’t one for news.
There's even a micro payments api in the works.
As a proof of concept, it worked fine but (a) i would need tons of money and (b) tons of misuse blocking to make this work.
Dropped the idea after a while though I think this could still work -
1. A group of friends set up a pihole and use that as their DNS 2. Transparently share usage with websites 3. Pay those websites a small per url fee per user
Not going to do that? Not until you got the first VC investor, and if you refuse then you get replaced with a CEO with more flexible morals.
And not just that - if you only share your pihole’s IP with a small group of friends, do you really want to know when they ask your pihole to resolve some shady url?
The main problem with the model is that it encourages clickbait titles. The secondary problem is that many people that want to support independent journalism also dislike walled gardens.
Artist don't make a living from music streaming.. They get money from live shows, swags and other performance. Steaming typically make less than 10% of what they need.
I am not sure this model would work for news.
Main issue is that the 100% baseline is already too little. No matter that overhead.
And as has been discussed for more than a couple decades, people mostly aren't willing to pay the mental transaction costs for micropayments at a sustainable level.
Some of it is probably the news/magazine businesses' fault in that they opened up the floodgates for free content during dot-com. But people wouldn't have liked the alternative either which was probably draconian paywalls and lawsuits over unauthorized content access.
Here was just one example:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22417852/twitter-buying-sc...
Edit: another comment named it as blendle.
I'd be happier to pay for a bundle subscription than individual things. I subscribe to the Washington Post, and regularly donate to The Guardian, but for everywhere else, a full subscription just doesn't make sense for the 1-2 articles I may read a month.
Instead of talking about that there is never ending jabber about supporting Content Creation (Supply). Cuz People love receiving attention much more than they are capable of doling it out (Goldharber's Attention Inequality). On top of that Broadcast tools have become cheap, distribution has become cheap, content creators a dim a dozen. So its a system with runaway Supply. Now mostly mistaking meeting sudden random huge spikes in Demand for success.
So dont ask your kids to get into content creation, unless they have infinite Trump like self promoting energies.
But it's 99% b2b networking and sales, trying to get websites on board and then negotiating contracts, and it sounded pretty unpleasant for a technical person to pursue.
I don't know why there aren't dozens of these. I guess everybody wants to fully own the platform, and aggregation is unappealing to them. But there's a lot of money just waiting for whoever does it, and it should benefit writers a fair bit too--they'll actually be able to get paid under this scheme; and a $10/month subscription might actually be worthwhile, instead of getting only a single website as it is today
But this is not about distribution platform. It's about the payment platform. They can all distribute in any way they like, as long as there is only one payment aggrgator.
In this world, instead of having an exclusive distribution deal with a single company, content creators (tv studios, journalists, sound cloud musicians, youtubers) would price their content at whatever they think it's worth, and make the viewing key available via e.g. smart contract or some other payment system and API.
Apple/Netflix/Hulu/Youtube/Popcorn Time could each have their own pricing model: ad supported, subscription based, usage based, pay as you go with a self-custody wallet. They can also distribute the content they want to carry. They can compete by reducing their hard costs for distributing the content, or by having better recommendation engines or content search, or delivering a better experience however else they like.
In this kind of world these platforms become more like interfaces to a universe of content that exists outside the walled garden. You can choose the interface you like and still have access to any content. You could use a community-supported FOSS interface that you self-fund, that kind of interface might give you access to the whole firehose, or you could subscribe to a hyper-curated Montessori-approved children's portal to content that is educational and not over-stimulating, for example. One can dream!
I’m not sure if lsat.tech is having issues, looks like the protocol was recently renamed L402: https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l40...
I suppose you need to enforce that all the distributors pay the same price for the content (otherwise again, we end up with the system we have today, where some distributors can pay more and get some kind of exclusivity through that).
Then how do you imagine it goes when the content creator gains a lot popularity? Do they raise their price for all distributors? Then do the distributors have to forward that price to their users, or can they do what they like? You mentioned having their own pricing model, so again Netflix could buy content from a popular artist at a good price, but provide it "for free" to their subscribers (in which case, again, that's the system we have today).
TL;DR: I don't see how that can work. Even with smart contracts (which are known to solve most problems /s).
The problem here seems to be enforcement and accounting as there would be a big incentive to not report the number of users in an honest way.
The main question is what you want to prevent. For me the answer is "the stuff you want is spread over 15 different subscriptions". Preventing that was the main selling point of netflix or steam over piracy.
I would love for something like that to exist for video and news. It would mean that a service like Netflix could offer all content.
I guess that’s why I’m not an entrepreneur. :)
Those that do and are clearly aren’t enough to be sustainable
https://web.archive.org/web/20180128171037/http://agate.one/
Every publisher overvalues their own work and guarantees that it will be read by 100x fewer people than otherwise.
Apple News?
The point is that even Taylor Swift doesn’t make very much money from Spotify. What other sources of revenue does journalism have? It’s not like the NYT is going to make a few million going on tour.
That is, the analogy you're really looking for is whether Spotify works for the record label.
They offer artists a similar 'royalty' on Spotify revenue as they did on record sales. In other words, where they used to give artists 10-20% of a CD sticker price, with much of the rest going to retailer markup, manufacturing costs, etc. they now keep 80-90% of the Spotify money, when they have zero per-unit costs and are simply passing the money through to the artist.
Artists who are working with Spotify outside of this system are able to make money from streaming, just as YouTubers who own their own content are able to make money while musicians typically see tiny amounts from YT.
However, the record company are essentially a bank who fund firstly recording and development costs, and second (both important and very expensive) marketing costs. So to be able to license directly with Spotify you have to already have a bunch of funds.
The Spotify, Apple, etc model pays the Record Label directly and the Musician is paid by the Record Label according to the agreed upon contract.
It seems like a lot of quality paper publications wanted to get into the whole online thing and the quality didn't survive the transition. Maybe because the medium doesn't allow for it. People don't interact with websites the same way. Maybe low effort content made enough ad money that companies just shifted their attention there instead.
Might be different in the US, considering its scope, but around here, this "buy me a coffee" type model just doesn't seem to work.
I have continued to pay for my nytimes subscription because they never stopped my student discount. I’m perfectly happy with the value nytimes gives me for 4 bucks a month. I’d not pay 10 though. But I use nytimes a lot. Any other publication dare not ask more than a buck a month.
The latest issue: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/issue/june-2023
In addition to that, we'd frequently stop by a newsstand or bookstore to pick up other periodicals if there was an article we were interested in, or if we had extra time to read that week.
The idea of halcyon days when all you needed was a single subscription is a myth. If you wanted regional news plus some pool reports from Washington, Wall Street, and somewhere in Europe, then sure, a single subscription would do. But if you liked to read several different news sources, you paid for several different news sources.
They all slowly got culled, though. Why? Because the content kept getting worse, and when it came time to deliberately renew one it simply wasn't worth the effort nor the money.
People don't pay for journalism because journalism went to shit.
It's a vicious circle really.
And dozens (hundreds) of other industries have been/are being consumed by the internet/computer technology. We can miss them, wish them to continue, but change is inevitable.
Why i don't pay for it ? Because the rest of the newspaper is filled with propaganda crap, so it is not worth it.
National geographic is this magazine writing about exotic people and places. Too bad the exotic people and places are destroyed to maximize profits.
I really wish micro payments were a thing where I could pay $20 a month and not hit upteen paywalls and they would all get a piece of that monthly cost.
Would gladly pay $1 or do a 5 pack for $5-6 with a 1year use expiration. They usually want $5 for one article or else expire credits in a month and charge $9. Just makes no sense to me, I'll get a pay per view rental on Amazon instead with my money and be entertained for 2 full hours. (I don't have Netflix or similar.)
The fall of these "journalists" will be a net good for the world.