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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

#271

Post by vog »

fareesh wrote: post #257
vog wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is easier to understand when looking across the borders, to the extremists. Here in Germany I often hear the phrase: "Left extremists set fire to cars, right extremists set fire to people." Of course this is oversimplified, yet there is quite some truth in it.

A right wing extremist would technically be more like someone who destroys traffic lights and stop signs. The political left believes in the idea of government and authority, the right wants to be left alone.

Maybe there are cultural differences between Europe and the US. "Right extremists" might be simply different here. In most European countries, right extremists call for a strong (nationalist) state and authoritarian structures, while left extremists are closer to anarchists.

Here, right extremists set fire on refugee accommodations and are rude to, thrash or even murder foreign-looking people as well as homeless people. Their enemies are the strangers and the weak people.

Left extremists set fire on cars and other perceived status symbols of richness, and try to fight with the police. Their enemy is the capitalism in general and the state in particular.

The left extremists also did kill people, but mostly in the 1970s (see RAF [1]), while the right extremists kill lots of people all the time (see NSU [2] for a recent example).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground

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

#273

Post by jimnotgym »

chickenfries wrote: post #261
twic wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a literally card-carrying socialist, i'd pick the Financial Times over the Guardian. They write about stuff that is actually important, in what seems like an intelligent and even-handed way. And the pages of bond prices are good for standing your muddy boots on. I grew up in a Guardian-reading household, and i want to like it, but it's too full of self-absorbed middle-class metropolitan smugness. And i'm a smug se…

As an American of similar political leanings, I feel the same way about NYTimes households. I also find myself reading FT, WSJ and Bloomberg for more "important" stories as well.

I don't think the Guardian is all good, but since it is free you can skip the bits you don't like. I read a mix of the Guardian, WSJ, NYT, Economist, generally any quality paper that lets you freeload a bit. I am just a dabbler by nature. I used to get the Economist, but when I found the pile of copies still in their cellophane by my chair had grown to 12 I canceled it. I still buy it now and then. I like the New European too. It's real echo chamber, but the way some people seem to get annoyed just by it existing is worth the cover price. In fact a great sport is to go into WH Smith on a Friday and put it in front of the Daily Hate Mail and stand back watch the grumpy old men grimace as they have to touch it to move it out of the way. Classic.

As an aside another sport which is not nearly popular enough is to pick up the pile of Daily Heil's at the supermarket and to place them in the toilet paper aisle. This actually caught on for a while. some people enjoy pushing pro EU leaflets inside them with the junk mail....

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

#274

Post by ogre_magi »

hsod wrote: post #265
ogre_magi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not telling you not to bring your values into politics. I'm not some kind of relativism evangelist. That's a strawman that multiple commenters here are standing up. This all started with one commenter saying that his outgroup is uniquely evil, and me replying that it was a matter of perspective. Both sides get to bring their values into politics.

Saying evil is a matter of perspective is relativism.

This is going to drift into a problem of definitions, as value conflicts often can. If your deontology considers me "evil," there's nothing I can do about that. I'm not going to complain about your use of the word.

People are going to have conflicts, and some of them are going to become holy wars. Best of luck in the wars to come.

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

#275

Post by eropple »

bondolo wrote: post #115
Pxtl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big worry is that this doesn't work for local news at all. The nitty gritty details of governance happen at the local level - municipal and state/provincial legislatures. Journalism on that stuff doesn't scale.

It is working in my community. http://www.berkeleyside.com/ has run a (very modest) profit for the last two years and continued to expand. Their focus is the greater Berkeley area; a population of about 350,000. It is a more educated and well-off population than national averages. The revenue split is 65-35% between supporters and advertising. They've also recently done a direct public offering of stock allowing for…

Berkeley is profoundly out of the norm for American communities. Berkeley has money. Other places don't. This problem is not solved by the way things work where the money flows freely.

Berkeley has 350,000 people in it. It's also eighteen square miles in size. The entire Portland-South Portland-Biddeford MSA in Maine is about half a million people and it's two thousand square miles in size. And it certainly wouldn't in my hometown in the Lakes Region of Maine, with a population across four towns in the school district of about 15,000 people across a little under two hundred square miles.

The problem devolves to income inequality and the unsustainable nature of community-driven efforts because of it--nobody can afford it!

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

#276

Post by ygaf »

jimnotgym wrote: post #243

A quick review of UK print media 1) The Times - Rupert Murdoch mouthpiece. Employs MP Michael Gove for £100k a year after he was sacked for being a backstabber. 2) The Mail - "The EU and immigrants want to kill your children and sleep with your sister and may even affect your house price". Billionaire owner too. 3) The Telegraph - "The Torygraph" former paper of the ruling classes, now mouth piece of two weird billio…

>because they hacked the voice mail of a girl who was murdered, and therefore delayed the police investigation.

This sounds like a fabricated implication. Lots of people (famous ones) were hacked, and I can't find a sign that delaying a police investigation caused the NOTW to nosedive.

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

#277

Post by hkmurakami »

jimnotgym wrote: post #243

A quick review of UK print media 1) The Times - Rupert Murdoch mouthpiece. Employs MP Michael Gove for £100k a year after he was sacked for being a backstabber. 2) The Mail - "The EU and immigrants want to kill your children and sleep with your sister and may even affect your house price". Billionaire owner too. 3) The Telegraph - "The Torygraph" former paper of the ruling classes, now mouth piece of two weird billio…

FT is now owned by Nikkei fwiw.

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

#278

Post by lostphilosopher »

khawkins wrote: post #192
stillkicking wrote: post #163

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…

> Now imagine how much more they'd make if they actually published quality material instead of culture war clickbait and freshman opinion pieces. Won't this crowdfunding potentially polarize journalism even more? In general, individuals are more passionate about their political opinions and social causes than for neutral, high-quality journalism which sometimes confirms, sometimes rejects their world-views. You also…

It's "no win" right? Whomever the news source is financially dependent on they at the mercy of that funding source's interest in neutrality. And since journalism costs money it will always be financially dependent on someone/thing. While a business may be wary about weighing in on a politically charged issue just to attempt to foster supporters good will (for exactly the reasons you discuss) the calculus is different when that issue directly affects their business. I'm not concerned about advertisers biasing news about unrelated hot button political issues. I'm worried about advertisers biasing news in favor of their business interests: corporate tax rates, trade agreements, consumer and environmental safety concerns - etc. Things that could be good for making the business money, but not good for people. I don't have those same concerns about individuals, but I'd have the (similar) concerns you bring up. The question then is what bias are you more comfortable with?

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

#279

Post by marcosscriven »

opportune wrote: post #176
wccrawford wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think even The Economist can be one-sided. They don’t seem to be able to write about the leader of the Labour Party here without comparing him to Hugo Chavez. Not that I count myself pro-Corbyn, or even party-political. But it does seem one-sided in that respect at least.

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

#280

Post by soundwave106 »

wtf_is_up wrote: post #169
Supernaut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too find some of the Guardian's columnists truly exasperating. However, isn't it important that they be given space to voice their opinions? Very occasionally, they give me pause for thought, and that's important. We've seen what happens (Trump, Brexit, etc.) when large sections of society retreat to personalised echo chambers.

>We've seen what happens (Trump, Brexit, etc.) when large sections of society retreat to personalised echo chambers. I can't tell if you're talking about pro-{Trump,Brexit} or anti-{Trump,Brexit} supporters. I think there was some significant part of Trump's moderate voterbase composed of people turned off by the purity tests of the progressives and echo chambers like those manifested in /r/politics.

Part of the issue of "echo chambers" is that they tend to be big fans of playing the fallacy of composition -- that is, they tend to take the "loudest extremists" on the other side, and over-promote them to marginalize the entire lot. Sure, radical progressives exist with narrow, dogmatic viewpoints... but these folks do not represent the entire spectrum of liberals / Democrats. The same goes for similarly narrow, dogmatic radical alt-righters or fundamentalists... these are not representative of all conservatives / Republicans. However, within echo chamber media, it is very common to see lots of unflattering reports on "radicals" of the "other side". These type of articles are actually pretty good warnings of what you are going to get.

As far as /r/politics/ and others of similar ilk goes, it seems to me that as a general rule, social media seems to be pretty good at carving out these "echo chambers" way more explicitly. It's probably because the promotional tools are crude (binary systems of likes / thumbs up / thumbs down / etc.)... and outrage-inducing headlines is much better at selling clicks. I personally don't think The Guardian is the greatest example of sober reporting in the world, but at this point I'd take them far and beyond any Reddit political sub I've seen so far, or in fact any mass political board on the Internet anywhere.

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