TechCrunch+ Termination
luxcapital.com
luxcapital.com
The interesting part of this article is the explanation of TC's business model: low-traffic deep industry coverage to attract high value eyeballs, and high-traffic clickbait to cash them in for ad dollars.
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/06/great-subscription-news-rev...
A revenue model based purely on traffic officially died along with The Messenger last week. The pure subscription model lends itself to publishers that are truly "necessary" like industry publications or the few papers of record like NYT and WSJ. Everyone in the middle is now scrambling to build some kind of hybrid model or else just die.
Good journalism takes time, and there are a lot of dead ends. Even entire stories.
One personal example -- in a previous point in my life when I worked as TV news producer, I once thought I discovered an incredible example of government over-spending -- airports in the middle of nowhere Alaska built to handle the largest commercial jetliners. But after further digging, I learned that this really made flights to and from Asia safe; a pilot could opt for one of these long runways in an emergency. Suddenly they didn't seem so pointless -- and there was never a story.
That's the kind of rabbit hole I would not have been able to go down if my entire paycheck was dependent on maximum eyeballs. Could it have been a story? Yes! Was it? No! Was it something I thought warranted a few hours of investigation? Yes.
These various business models all have pros and cons, but ultimately, some form of community investment into media is needed. Whether thats through subscriptions, advertising, donations, or some thing else is still unclear. And of course, on the newsroom side of things, they need to foster the trust that they are looking into things that may turn out to be nothing, but also could be important. We as a society just need to find a way to pay for it.
Also, if people paid for news by the piece, it would mean that truly important news stories that aren't sensationalistic would be less likely to be done because there's no chance that they would bring in the bucks.
It's a bit like movies: the blockbuster schlock is necessary to fund the production of other movies that may or may not make a dime, but are of great value nonetheless.
Is that really a problem though? How many times are you going to click on that news source before you just see the name and don’t bother?
Even among “free” news sources there are plenty I won’t give the time of day because I know they’re peddling nonsense and half-truths-at-best.
A view: (1) Want to know what is going on in the world, to improve life, career, be an informed citizen, for curiosity, etc. and (2) would like to have a news source that would provide (1).
So far, know of no source(s) that provides (1) with quality high enough to pay attention to: One issue of quality is (A) achieving common high school standards for term papers; can't find such sources. (B) Can like entertainment but mostly want INFORMATION that is both credible and relevant to (1). (C) Can't find sources with such information. (D) Simple tests: (i) What was the arithmetic used to calculate efficacy of Covid vaccine in the early randomized, placebo controlled, double blind trials -- it appears that the US MSM (mainstream media) doesn't understand or want to understand that arithmetic. (ii) How big is the US national debt, over time, in comparison with the US GDP, considering inflation, in comparison with the needed US money supply, other considerations? (iii) The US birth rate is so low, on average less than 2 per woman, we are going extinct -- why, in the US, EU, Japan, etc.? (iv) What people, companies, organizations are driving the US open borders and how are they doing that? (v) What are the forces that have made acceptable, surgery on the genitals of minors and how did those forces do that?
A summary of the MSM is that it is often traditional journalism where instead of the standards and techniques common in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields goes for emotionalism (over rationalism) borrowing from drama and fictional literature -- grab people by the heart, the gut, and below the belt and their eyeballs and ad revenue will be sure to follow.
Not all such information in (1) produced with quality as in (A) and (B) has to be comparatively expensive.
> A summary of the MSM is that it is often traditional journalism where instead of the standards and techniques common in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields goes for emotionalism (over rationalism) borrowing from drama and fictional literature -- grab people by the heart, the gut, and below the belt and their eyeballs and ad revenue will be sure to follow.
You appear to have been thoroughly grabbed. Perhaps you should consider holding these claims to the same standards of evidence you demand for the others in your list.
Sure. Glad to do that. Have done it many times at various Web sites. For this post here at Hacker News, tried to be short. What you are asking for could use a book, maybe books.
Okay:
(1) There is a list of MSM hoaxes at
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2024/01/30/nolte-atlanti...
The hoaxes are evidence of my claim of bad reporting.
Each claimed hoax has a link to a reference. If the references are not good reporting, then we have more evidence of my claim of bad reporting.
(2) At
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/02/09/america-last-1...
just saw:
"12 Senate Republicans Vote to Send Ukraine Another $60B After Vowing to Put U.S. Border First"
Soooo, need details on the $60B: There are claims, where we need details, that, in direct contradiction to the headline, the $60B is not actual money we will "send" to Ukraine and, instead, is shipments of equipment, supplies, etc. from US sources that amount to the $60B to the US sources. Soooo, if these claims are true, no US dollars actually leave the US, and US balance of payments and exchange rate of the dollar only a little or not at all affected.
And, for a Senator in a state with a company that makes bullets that will get some of the $60B can help explain why that Senator voted for the $60B -- inquiring minds of curious citizens might want to know.
(3) Also at
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/02/08/late-january-su...
just saw:
"Late January Surge in Jobless Claims Crashes To A Halt"
So, "surge" and "crashes" are heavily emotional and not supported rationally. Easily enough, we want the data over time that justifies these emotional descriptions. The story does have more data, but just a graph of "claims" over time would be a LOT better -- the story doesn't have enough data to permit drawing a good graph.
(4) At
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/02/08/poll-black-and...
see
"Poll: Black and Hispanic Voters Fleeing Democratic Party in Growing Numbers"
Here "fleeing" and "growing" are emotional but not really rational. E.g., "growing" might mean just 1 case in the whole year and, thus, meaningless. Soooo, again we need a graph over time.
(5) Then for one more, at
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/arab-center-poll-us/2024/0...
is
"Arab Center Poll: Near Consensus of Arabs Views US Negatively"
So what? Is that new? Again, we need a graph over time. Without data over time, this report is nearly meaningless.
The same incentives for click-bait and low-quality journalism will exist in a world with reader-driven micropayments.
The NYT now has 1/3 of their top area dedicated to "lifestyle" (what's going on on Tiktok) and "opinion" sections - both of which bring in tons of clicks.
The unique articles about startups are gone - replaced by a repackaging of press releases, the optimistic tone of supporting entrepreneurs has been replaced by the cynicism of writers that dislike the companies/technologies/founders they write about, etc.
If anything, this article shows many examples of other publications that are successful with just that kind of coverage, while TechCrunch has unfortunately made itself generic.
You nailed it. That's exactly what it is!
Basically wokified PR Newswire and the few startup articles that do exist are boring and written by people who seem to really dislike the very subject of their articles.
I find this type of thing very distasteful.