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Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

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Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#21

Post by KozmoNau7 »

floatboth wrote: post #14
radmuzom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this comment is down-voted, it is not necessarily wrong. As an Indian, I was so exasperated after Americans voted a criminal as the President that I subscribed to multiple organizations which are considered left-wing by American conservatives or libertarians. These include regular fees to NY Times, Propublica and Guardian with occasional donations to various organizations in the United States.

NY Times is far from "considered left-wing". It's currently heavily criticized for publishing terrible articles sympathizing with and humanizing literal neo-nazis.

Well, neo-nazis are humans, and we should never forget that fact. They're not mindless monsters, they're actual living breathing people, and only by understanding that fact can we surmise their motivations and act against them.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#22

Post by zoul »

caoilte wrote: post #18

That certainly highlights the importance of the right UX, but I wish they had invested in Patreon style features to allow support for specific authors. I would pay £5/month to the Guardian and be happy for them to take a 30% administrative cut if they ring fenced the rest for writers I want to support. The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent. Only experimenting with democratisa…

> The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent.

What makes you say that?

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#23

Post by elorant »

The way I see it this model can only work for mediums with international readership. Say for example you have a newspaper in a small country with 10M people. Let's assume 5% of general population reads a newspaper and you have 5 major ones. That's roughly 100k readers per newspaper. Now how many of those could you convince to subscribe? Even if we assume an optimistic 10% that could hardly keep a newspaper afloat. You need readership in the millions to make this model viable, or a more loyal audience like the one Germans or Japanese have.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#24

Post by calcifer »

caoilte wrote: post #18

That certainly highlights the importance of the right UX, but I wish they had invested in Patreon style features to allow support for specific authors. I would pay £5/month to the Guardian and be happy for them to take a 30% administrative cut if they ring fenced the rest for writers I want to support. The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent. Only experimenting with democratisa…

> The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent.

> nepotist trap it has fallen into.

Would you care to elaborate on these a little bit? I'm a long time supporter of Guardian and this is the first time I've seen a nepotism complaint.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#25

Post by wjnc »

f055 wrote: post #10

This. Years ago it was obvious to most newspapers that paid subscribers are their lifeline. Advertisers come and go, daily sales come and go, but long-period subscribers keep you afloat. Somehow, when the respected newspapers moved to the web, they forgot that, and kept pumping ads like crazy. This, in essence, moved the sense of their product from quality content to clickable content - these two don't mix. Consequen…

Totally agree. Even my favorite subscription (The Economist) had a time where I as a subscriber felt too much content was given away for free online. They luckily turned that back and kept the ecosphere going.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#26

Post by monksy »

caoilte wrote: post #18

That certainly highlights the importance of the right UX, but I wish they had invested in Patreon style features to allow support for specific authors. I would pay £5/month to the Guardian and be happy for them to take a 30% administrative cut if they ring fenced the rest for writers I want to support. The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent. Only experimenting with democratisa…

I would agree with the concept of only supporting the writers that you like. I used to like the Guardian because they had good journalism. However, the opinion pieces are absolutely atrocious and detract the quality of the paper.

For example, there was an article in my google now articles recommended from the guardian that was "Milo Yiannopolous has huge support in Australia, men must call him out."

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#28

Post by drinchev »

f055 wrote: post #10

This. Years ago it was obvious to most newspapers that paid subscribers are their lifeline. Advertisers come and go, daily sales come and go, but long-period subscribers keep you afloat. Somehow, when the respected newspapers moved to the web, they forgot that, and kept pumping ads like crazy. This, in essence, moved the sense of their product from quality content to clickable content - these two don't mix. Consequen…

Note that Guardian is successful, because of "supporters" and not >subscribers<. It's different than WSJ, where they lock the content, until you pay. The Guardian way looks more like the Wikipedia one.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#29

Post by ChrisSD »

caoilte wrote: post #18

That certainly highlights the importance of the right UX, but I wish they had invested in Patreon style features to allow support for specific authors. I would pay £5/month to the Guardian and be happy for them to take a 30% administrative cut if they ring fenced the rest for writers I want to support. The Scott Trust has failed to preserve a newspaper that is fiercely independent. Only experimenting with democratisa…

Ring fencing a percentage for specific authors sounds like a good idea but in practice you end up giving a portion of editorial control to wealthy donors. This is not good for any independent news media.

Re: Asking members to support journalism, The Guardian raises more revenue than ads

#30

Post by beojan »

f055 wrote: post #10

This. Years ago it was obvious to most newspapers that paid subscribers are their lifeline. Advertisers come and go, daily sales come and go, but long-period subscribers keep you afloat. Somehow, when the respected newspapers moved to the web, they forgot that, and kept pumping ads like crazy. This, in essence, moved the sense of their product from quality content to clickable content - these two don't mix. Consequen…

> This, in essence, moved the sense of their product from quality content to clickable content

The same problem exists with paid subscribers / buyers. Just compare the circulation numbers of British tabloids to those of high quality British newspapers (which don't really exist anymore. Even the Independent and (to a lesser extent) the Guardian have moved toward pandering to their audience.)

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