Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

niemanlab.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 365 posts

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

#121

Post by jamespo »

m00g00 wrote: post #103
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the recent editorial condemning Taylor Swift: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/the-gu...

Notice also, no byline, and no comments allowed. The Guardian often panders to culture war outrage bait then hides behind taking responsibility or criticism with tricks like this, and the fact that an occasional decent article exists. Why again does this failing rag deserve support, and why is this obvious propaganda upvoted to the top of HN?

ironic comment from a throwaway anonymous account

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

#122

Post by m00g00 »

gsnedders wrote: post #118
m00g00 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice also, no byline, and no comments allowed. The Guardian often panders to culture war outrage bait then hides behind taking responsibility or criticism with tricks like this, and the fact that an occasional decent article exists. Why again does this failing rag deserve support, and why is this obvious propaganda upvoted to the top of HN?

Comments are only allowed on the blog-like "comment is free" posts, which presumably they don't consider editorials part of despite them now obviously being part of the same platform technically (hence the /commentisfree/ URLs). This isn't something specific to this editorial; it is the general rule the website works by. (As an aside, I'd much rather Comment is Free just died, because so much of what the Guardian get…

No idea what their arbitrary rules are, but I noticed a review by The Guardian of Swift's new album linked at the top of this article did have comments enabled. Both of these are obviously opinions, so I'm not sure what the difference is, besides the fact that one article (GP) was way more likely to receive backlash in the comments than the other.

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

#123

Post by DamnInteresting »

elorant wrote: post #23

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. Yo…

> You need readership in the millions to make this model viable

Not necessarily; for primarily online publications, operating costs rise roughly linearly with readership. I operate a donor-supported publication with a much smaller readership than the Guardian, yet we have stayed afloat for years via donations because our costs are much lower. It's a model that can work for practically any size of publication.

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

#124

Post by monksy »

calcifer wrote: post #55
monksy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just typed it directly from my phone. That must have been updated. Haven't read the article, because I've seen numerous others from the news source. The issue I have with an article with a title like this: Why is it a bad thing to support Milo? Why is it "men who need to be called to fight"? (I don't care about reasons why you don't like Milo. I'm suggesting they're a person with different opinions, respect that) T…

> Haven't read the article Wow, so you are complaining about, and asking questions to the author of, an article based purely on your perception of its title? > I don't care about reasons why you don't like Milo. I'm suggesting they're a person with different opinions, respect that Just a cursory search into who Milo is, what he says and does will show you he is a deeply, virulently intolerant person. And in order to…

As I stated before: I don't care about why you don't like Milo.

What is important and what the news should be covering: Why are people taking a liking to him. (And do so in an impartial way without trying to fill the article with 80% hit-pieces) What is he saying and doing is catching a lot of attention? Why are his speeches resonating? How is he in existence? (Is his actions/his character in response to others)

> the society must be intolerant of intolerance

Intolerant towards intolerant extreme actions, yes. In an open society, you must be aware that people have different stances and prejudices. Closed societies can't tolerate the "intolerance". (I.e. Some countries you can't criticize the government)

> "pushing political stances"

Given this stance: I should be given the right to have my stances published in the paper. I operate the "Church of Not Wearing Pants" it is a religious organization, the article is about how the government should respect our religious existence by making pants illegal. Should that be published? It's as equally absurd as calling for a protest for someone you don't like.

> Unbiased journalism

I agree with you 100% neutral journalism doesn't happen. My problem is that unchecked journalism has given us an extreme selection of what is presented and the bias is injected into the news story from the author themselves.

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

#125

Post by gsnedders »

m00g00 wrote: post #122
gsnedders wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments are only allowed on the blog-like "comment is free" posts, which presumably they don't consider editorials part of despite them now obviously being part of the same platform technically (hence the /commentisfree/ URLs). This isn't something specific to this editorial; it is the general rule the website works by. (As an aside, I'd much rather Comment is Free just died, because so much of what the Guardian get…

No idea what their arbitrary rules are, but I noticed a review by The Guardian of Swift's new album linked at the top of this article did have comments enabled. Both of these are obviously opinions, so I'm not sure what the difference is, besides the fact that one article (GP) was way more likely to receive backlash in the comments than the other.

Weird. It certainly used to be the case no "newspaper" article had comments enabled, but that definitely does. So yeah, OK, I don't understand when commenting is enabled any more.

I mean, at least the old "newspaper" platform v. "blog" platform distinction made sense—there were many more differences (editorial control being a major one) than just commenting.

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

#126

Post by chimprich »

otalp wrote: post #41
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.

NYT and The Guardian are not "left-wing". They are establishment liberal and have supported every major war the US has been involved in. They regularly slander anti-establishment and left-wing intellectuals[1][2] and for the most part hate or ignore people like Corbyn and Sanders. [1] https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/23/noam-c...

I'm sorry, but that's total rubbish. The Guardian supported Corbyn in the recent general election [1].

The Guardian was very strongly opposed to e.g. the invasion of Iraq (articles too numerous to cite).

Of your two references, one is from Glenn Greenwald criticising the Guardian. The other is Glenn Greenwald /published in the Guardian/ defending Chomsky. The article he criticises got corrected.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/201...

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

#127

Post by joosters »

m00g00 wrote: post #103
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the recent editorial condemning Taylor Swift: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/the-gu...

Notice also, no byline, and no comments allowed. The Guardian often panders to culture war outrage bait then hides behind taking responsibility or criticism with tricks like this, and the fact that an occasional decent article exists. Why again does this failing rag deserve support, and why is this obvious propaganda upvoted to the top of HN?

Show me a comments section of an online newspaper that isn't full of bile and hate? It unfortunately seems unavoidable, and so many publications are just removing their comments sections. Much better than leaving the hate in, IMO.

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

#128

Post by te_chris »

drinchev wrote: post #28
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.

Also worth noting: Jimmy Wales is on the Guardian's board.

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

#129

Post by dalbasal »

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…

I agree that content quality and revenue source are related in this way. There are bunch of analogies online, that I think help fill out this picture.

Youtube “monetisation” spawned a bunch of clickbait-driven spam. Patreon produced good quality content, acting on the same platform, at the same time. This is somewhere between a subscriber and supporter model. A lot like some newspapers. Almost a natural experiment.

In terms of operational scale, patreon’s “creators” are kind of similar to journalists. It takes similar sums to support the work, and they’re on similar timescales. This makes me think a similar model might work for journalism, though maybe not for newspapers.

Podcasting is another possibly useful comparison. Very little clickbait (earbait?) ever crosses my radar. Podcasts are usually ad supported, but there’s still no way to SEO or clickbait your way to a win. To succeeds a podcast needs subscriptions, usually free. Even @ free, the need to attract a dedicated subscriber base encourages the same sort of focus on the same audience. Slow & steady growth. Win more subscribers than you lose…

This example is messier, but I think it shows that the rules are rules of thumb.

Basically, the path to success needs to depend on quality for quality to be likely. Subscribers are generally quality sensitive. I dunno how to formulate a principle exactly, but it feels like there is something here somewhere.

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

#130

Post by foobarbazetc »

I pay them because it’s the only news source I actually trust.

Their live updating event pages are really great too.

They don’t always get it right with tech articles (they pissed off Pinboard a while back — they fixed it eventually) but still a great source of international news.

Post reply on HN