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

niemanlab.org

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

#171

I'd gladly pay for a publication that wasn't cranking out clickbait, outrage pieces and catering to their advertisers and their need to be associated with only politically correct partners.

Similarly, I'd pay for a publication that brought me news I was interested in and covered both sides of every debate, instead of obviously catering to one side or the other constantly. They'd have to cover each side well, obviously.

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

#172
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…

Then why would ad-supported work instead, under the same readers?

If you can pay the bills with ads, but not your readers directly, you probably aren't providing enough value.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That opinion piece is titled " If Milo Yiannopoulos has huge support in Australia, men must call him out". I wasn't aware of the article before your post, but now that I've read it, I don't see anything controversial (much less "atrocious") in it. Care to elaborate?

Some men feel weirdly threatened by the possibility of a world where their less than stellar behaviour towards women might be called out. Every comment like the one you're replying to is the same "I loved X until they lost all credibility and became biased by Y" where Y = calling out shitty MRA/Alt-right activist figures.

I'm not a fan of Milo either, but the article just reeks of slacktivism. It's just a angry rant that doesn't offer anything new.

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

#174
post #157
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also make use of offshore tax structures to minimise their taxes, such as the £302m profit from selling Auto Trader magazine. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/will-the-guardian-now-...

Just checking the references in this article. The offshore tax claim seems to be referenced to "Guido Fawkes" ( https://order-order.com/ "Guido Fawkes Blog of plots, rumours and conspiracy") which seems to be a collection of conspiracy articles about all kinds of stuffs, written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Staines

Staines is a piece of work but very well connected. Conspiracies, yes, but not conspiracy theories. He's as establishment as a libertarian blogger could hope to be in the UK.

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

#175

Now imagine how much more they'd make if they actually published quality material instead of culture war clickbait and freshman opinion pieces. 'Member when The Guardian was one of the outlets boldly reporting the Snowden and Manning leaks? I member. Right now on their front page I can read how democracy is being undermined "by not distinguishing between fact and opinion". And you know what? They're right on this fro…

I get your frustration but the answer is less money.

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

#176

I'd gladly pay for a publication that wasn't cranking out clickbait, outrage pieces and catering to their advertisers and their need to be associated with only politically correct partners.

Similarly, I'd pay for a publication that brought me news I was interested in and covered both sides of every debate, instead of obviously catering to one side or the other constantly. They'd have to cover each side well, obviously.

This is the problem with modern media IMO, each side presents their own side to their viewers in a logical matter-of-fact way (almost dismissively, though, of finer details) but only picks the most egregiously bad logic / moral failings of the other side to show to their supporters. So each side thinks the other is crazy because they only see the ~1-5% of the other side that gets paraded around for their idiocy. Even which pieces each side chooses to cover are completely different: it's almost like they're not even reporting on events occurring simultaneously much of the time.

I only trust a very small number of publishers these days, such as the Atlantic and the Economist. Everything else is some sort of curated echo chamber

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

#177
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…

Slightly off-topic, but I just went on http://www.gazetaprawna.pl/ and was rather turned off by the auto-playing video/audio (that I could not find the source of).

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

#178
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also make use of offshore tax structures to minimise their taxes, such as the £302m profit from selling Auto Trader magazine. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/will-the-guardian-now-...

Yes some what ironic given there role in the paradise papers etc newspapers and the media are always do what I say not what I or my owner does

1) The Guardian doesn't have an 'owner'as such, it is owned by a trust.

2) It did make this deal offshore but it didn't save then tax. Good links above on this

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

#179

Now imagine how much more they'd make if they actually published quality material instead of culture war clickbait and freshman opinion pieces. 'Member when The Guardian was one of the outlets boldly reporting the Snowden and Manning leaks? I member. Right now on their front page I can read how democracy is being undermined "by not distinguishing between fact and opinion". And you know what? They're right on this fro…

I agree. Ever since Snowden they have been going to absolute horse shit.

examples: https://somuchguardian.tumblr.com

most recent example: basically calling Taylor swift a white supremacist for being silent on politics https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/the-gu...

I can't take them seriously anymore, their editorial board has gone mad

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

#180
post #26
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."

Pretty standard Guardian opinion piece, well in line with prevailing centre-left views, moderate feminists etc. No idea what is atrocious or poor quality about it

That isn't to say the Graun doesn't do things badly some time but this sort of article is precisely their raison d'etre

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