Yeah, I don’t get it. Do people want actual journalism to go out of business?
Former Google Contributor user reporting in! I absolutely do not want normal journalism going out of business, but I’m not going to subscribe to Bloomberg or FT or any of those sites on a recurring basis for one article. I love the idea of paying a non-subscription for one thing, occasionally, though!
But I'm interested in maybe 3 articles a month. If I were to pay for them it's like paying for Netflix and watching a movie a month. Or subscribing to a dead-tree newspaper and only reading the comics.
I do get that micropayments are hard, but it's not a technical issue - it never has been. It's all about credit card costs and legalese.
They do! And I did test a subscription to Bloomberg, and subscriptions to various other sites, but I have never found it compelling enough to visit for the price on a regular basis. I get my news from a large variety of sources. I have never found it valuable to only subscribe to one source, and I simply do not have the capital to justify subscribing to all of the places that sometimes publish good articles.
Could ask a friend to subscribe for you and read the PDF from Telegram.
Only download this ROM if you own the original cartridge!
it seems rarer, for sure. perhaps the quantity of good journalism is the same but there's a lot more trash to sift through?
but i wouldnt say it went out of business or anything. there's some fantastic journalists out there still.
So Daily Mail, Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, FOX and many others all went out of business decades ago?
That is breaking news to me.
and, for at least some of the ones you listed, i would have to agree that the bar for what they call "journalism" is not very high, and the concept of journalistic integrity appears to be a pretty low priority.
Bringing it back to paywalls and Kagi and paying for content, Glenn has 3 kids and I think a bunch of dogs and they all need to eat.
I love high-quality journalism (Mainstream sources of the past; a few current gems like Quanta and PBS; you can find other exceptions). I have explicitly bumped the priority of the high-quality sources in search, and blocked or subdued some of the low quality ones which come up frequently.
If newspapers want more traffic they need to get together and offer bundle deals, because expecting people to pay $20 a month subscriptions for multiple newspapers is a fantasy.
But yes, something like Apple News with an ad-free tier that works with standard websites. E.g. the participating news sites should recognize whatever service token you have and serve unpaywalled content.
Member stations could be responsible for more local content and be a part of a network that syndicates content from other stations.
It could cover more than just news though - children's programming, think pieces, deeper dives into government.
Man, that would be great.
Edit: Sorry, didn’t mean this to be as sarcastic towards you OP, more annoyed we defunded it last year.
That’s ok I was already doing the whole “obliquely reference things that already exist in the abstract as if they were a novel idea” bit; you doubling down on it kind of makes it better.