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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

#301

Post by skinnymuch »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #47
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…

Back in the day, a typical newspaper made about 80% of it's revenue from advertisers (including the classifieds), and about 80% of its costs were printing & distribution. So free Internet distribution should have been 80% of the revenue at 20% of the cost... :)

How much were the classifieds pulling in before in that 80%, do you know? I know classifieds used to be huge.

Craigslist could probably pull in multiple billions a year in profit and 10 figures in revenue if they went for revenue a lot more. Company value would probably be close to eBay level.

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

#302

Post by Nursie »

gsnedders wrote: post #125
m00g00 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a while they had comments on almost everything, then they realised that the majority of comments were opposed to their viewpoint, and even ridiculed them. So they shut most of it down

That's not to say the readership wasn't with them - that's a lot harder to quantify - but thencommenters largely weren't.

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

#303

Post by skinnymuch »

theoh wrote: post #236
hitekker wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd caveat this by saying that corrupt democrats do exist; not every democrat is pure and truthful. Far from it, a good swathe of them are likely just politicians with their own self interest. The left is very much not sunshine and rainbows. However, you are correct in noting that the parent commenter desperately wants to paint both sides as biased, guilty, and debased, in order to excuse the wrongdoings of the cause…

You presumably don't mean "99% of democrats are not pure and truthful." Did you mean that apart from 1% bad apples, they are? Because what you wrote condemns 99% of them. Difference between "not everyone is pure" and "everyone is not pure".

Saying 99% of almost any group is not pure and truthful is probably much closer to the truth than a small fraction like 1%. And I'm assuming we aren't literally meaning completely pure and truthful either. Still has me think the original statement is closer to the truth.

Democrats in America are no saints. Just compared to Republicans, in my opinion, they comparatively are much better.

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

#304

Post by yesenadam »

ogre_magi wrote: post #217
hsod wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like relativism run amok. All political positions are not equal except in a completely unmoored ethical system.

I don't subscribe to an objective morality. There are things that I value and attempt to maximize, but I don't feel the need to compel all sentients in the universe to adopt my position. I'm willing to "live and let live," with the understanding that conflict will still happen sometimes and that's okay.

The language is tricky in this area; I'll try to be clear. There seems some confusion in your concepts; at least I'm confused about them. I don't claim to have this stuff all worked out; sorry if it's not helpful.

It sounds like, for you, 'subscribing to an objective morality' would involve feeling the need to make everyone 'adopt your position' - share your beliefs? do as you do?

I don't think there are actually many ethical or social relativists at all. Even the most self-proclaimedly relativist academics may talk like that professionally, but in their everyday lives have quite another standard, and evidently believe in objective ethics/morality/reality etc. That's the thing about ethics; it's not like favourite ice cream flavour, where you might think lemon is best, chocolate awful, but understand it's just your personal taste. Believing something is ethically wrong means it's not just 'wrong for you', but 'wrong, full stop.' It doesn't mean you go around forcing people to think/act the same. (Although probably means you wish they would.)

I think you have described tolerance, an understanding that people think differently, not everyone has the same values etc. But to go from that to thinking there is no right and wrong, good or bad - only right-for-you, wrong-for-you - well, that's an abysmal step. I suppose you don't mean that; I hope not. Well, even in your "I don't feel the need to compel all sentients in the universe to adopt my position" it sounds like you think it's simply a better way of acting than others who need to compel etc. Not just better-for-you, but better for anyone, better for everyone i.e. objectively better.

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

#305

Post by skinnymuch »

ouid wrote: post #262
dominotw wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most guilty to least guilty Guilty of what precisely?

It is clear from the context that I am talking about corruption

We have an NJ senator going through a corruption case right now. And he's seeming like he will be saved because the Supreme Court allowed certain amounts of corruption before so he's only getting off because we made some stuff legal. I'm guessing he isn't at the back of a hypothetical list. Most democrats who talk about him are also in support of him if I'm not mistaken. There's also the behind the scenes supporting of Hillay over Bernie. If not outright corruption and collusion.

This doesn't mean Democrats are as bad as Republicans, but they aren't the saints you're making them out to be.

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

#306

Post by drdrey »

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…

I would love to see a similar review of US media (print or digital). Where is the good stuff?

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

#307

Post by fineline »

funkythingss wrote: post #179
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…

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

Thanks so much for that link. As a "progressive leaning" individual I have despaired at the descent of the Guardian, along with much of the formerly progressive media, into pure political-correctness-gone-mad, value-signalling nonsense, especially as I'm white, male and not getting any younger (apparently there are some demographics it's still just fine to build very negative stereotypes about...) It's good to counter that despair with the humour of collecting the maddest headlines together. Perhaps the Guardian really is just a clever, ironic, self-parodying send up thesedays?

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

#308

Post by vvpan »

Part of getting people to pay you is - how easy it is to pay. One of the things I think are exciting is that projects like MetaMask basically integrate cryptocurrencies into your browser, making transaction very easy, safe (as safe as crypto at least) and anonymous, no matter if the entities participating in the transaction are in Yemen or London.

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

#309

Post by giobox »

jopsen wrote: post #223
bryanlarsen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, a typical newspaper made about 80% of it's revenue from advertisers (including the classifieds), and about 80% of its costs were printing & distribution. So free Internet distribution should have been 80% of the revenue at 20% of the cost... :)

There is probably not as much money in ads as there used to be. In the good old days there was no alternative to print media ads. Today there is so much more ad space available.

The money is definitely still there in ads, and growing nicely! As others have pointed out, Google and Facebook have hoovered up the lion's share of the new revenue for themselves, which is arguably starving off the wider ad-supported ecosystem in many ways.

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

#310

Post by GunlogAlm »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #130

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.

Their journalism generally is very good, certainly better than the majority of British newspapers and tabloids. Their opinion articles, however, range from decent to atrocious - I tend to ignore the 'Comment is Free' section now, unless I'm familiar with a piece's author.
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