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L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

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Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#251

Post by chvid »

TekMol wrote: post #248
generalpass wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the LA Times run on your Adsense revenue?

This must be a misunderstanding. Let me rephrase my question: Why did the LA Times revenue get "nearly eliminated" while I don't see a change at all? The ads I see on my website seem to advertise all kinds of random stuff, so it is not like I am targeting a specific niche. Maybe some other HN users with websites that feature ads can chime in and tell their experience?

There was an earlier discussion here of youtubers seeing traffic growth but total revenue drop hinting at lower advertisement through Google as well.

But "nearly eliminated" sounds like a lot.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#252

Post by [deleted] »

jacobolus wrote: post #188
david38 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing is we’ll see in the end. Lots of predictions. It’s almost as if you can’t be criticized for being too cautious. Sure, but the good will won’t last forever. The US accepts 22k deaths a year without blinking due to flu. That’s just the flu. What’s the magic number we’re willing to accept? 50k? 100? There has to be a percentage of the population we are willing to accept as casualty because we already do,…

> accepts 22k deaths a year without blinking The US spends a lot of effort trying to convince people to get flu shots, take antivirals if they get sick, and stay away from vulnerable populations while contagious; hospitals prepare extensively for increased use during flu season (and medical workers are vaccinated, making flu much less personally risky for them), widely distribute easy-to-administer flu tests, treat p…

[deleted]

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#253

Post by simtel20 »

chewz wrote: post #245
jacobolus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet . You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the…

Anders Tegnell - author of Swedish strategy says that the measures are working and deaths are concentrated in Somali, Iraqi and Syria - born population. https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset/folkhalsomynd... https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/2Gx0Ev/fodda-i-somalia-... Country of birth Number of cases Over-representation Somalia 283 7 Turkiet 150 5,1 Irak 242 2,9 Finland 188 2,3 Eritrea 55 2,1 Syrien 197 1…

But it's not stopping the spread. A friend's office in Västerås just had a case and only now went wfh, while that friend already wfh but still drops off and picks his kids up from school and is getting symptoms now.

The comment about the deaths being primarily in particular communities sounds like the opposite of working, though. Can you provide context regarding why it's working if people in some communities are dying?

* Edit: thanks for clarifying. I didn't realize that your comment about measures working as intended was hinting at a eugenics motives of the policymakers when I first read it, but do now.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#254

Post by squillesque »

torpfactory wrote: post #41
tempsy wrote: post #26

I’m definitely in the camp that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease” itself. Sitting in California where there are so few cases makes me wonder if the economic toll is totally worth it. Seems like we’ve used a tsunami to put out a campfire.

If you act early, it will always appear you overreacted. If you act too late, well... https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007076660/corona...

The concern I have is the endgame with shelter in place rules. I'm fairly convinced they're working (although not completely so), but what happens when they're lifted? What is the timeline for doing so, and under what conditions? What do you do to prevent the infection crisis from hitting after lifting the rules?

There's already been huge economic impacts, and everyone seems to assume once this is all lifted things will be normal. But without a vaccine or systematic antibody testing, will we just end up delaying the worst of the virus?

My fear is one of two things will happen: either we will have done all this economic slaughter with the lockdowns and still end up with the direct effects of the virus, but delayed, because of lack of herd immunity; or we will do this indefinitely and the economic casualties will increase proportionately.

I'm not saying the lockdowns are or are not the wrong thing to do, but I do feel like doing them without a clear plan for getting out of them is. I also feel like in the absence of these plans, its unfair to compare no-lockdown policies to lockdown policies in current casualties because those places may just be experiencing pains that lockdown locations have temporarily avoided. Places with lockdowns too late may unwittingly be similar.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#255

Post by afiori »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #211
CydeWeys wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, spoiler alert, not everyone is young and healthy. In fact, the majority of Americans have at least one comorbidity for coronavirus. > Covid for new york city has a death rate of about 75 per 100k. So far. We're still experiencing hundreds of deaths per day in the city, significantly more than all other causes combined. Your analysis is vastly premature.

> So far. We're still experiencing hundreds of deaths per day in the city, significantly more than all other causes combined. Your analysis is vastly premature Even if it's 150 per 100k, or even if it's 500 or 1000 per 100,000, is that too much? We need to establish an upper bound for the number of deaths we're willing to tolerate. It cannot be "zero". There is a balance between acceptable mortality and economic cons…

I would say that doubling the death rate sounds bad. There is a point to be made that the main effect could be more on the side of reducing the high percentiles of lifespan rather than a long term increase in the death rate.

Also I think that setting an acceptable death rate is missing the point; depending on the illness anything between 0% to 100% is "acceptable" if there is nothing we can do. A more appropriate measure (IMHO) would be a something vaguely like lives_saved^2/effort.

In particular this need to consider the famous flattening the curve and the fact that for some categories of people the mortality rate can be very high.

On the other hand (and also on a more amoral side) it would be interesting how many alive man-months COVID-19 destroyed, as in how long was the average life expectancy of the people that died from it. I feel like this would be both harder to measure and more significant in term of sociological damage.

(in general this kind of conversations are hard as it is easy to insinuate that old people have less value which is both completely false and somewhat true, I personally do not possess the talent of walking this fine line of language)

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#256

Post by virvar »

christophilus wrote: post #47
thaumaturgy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been very hard for me to understand this line of thinking. As I see it, there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken. Do you think California would not have many more cases if the measures were relaxed? Or do you think that the cases would not be all that bad? Or do you think that they would only affect people that you aren't personally concerned about? I'm asking honestly fo…

> there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Our options aren't binary. It's not as if the only choice is "Nuke everything" or "Surrender". The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. We probably could d…

Sweden is one of the few countries that didn’t lock down. I’m Danish, and we locked down hard and are now on the process of reopening where as Sweden has 4-5 times the amount of deaths we do per capita, despite being a much, much larger geographical area and they’re closing down more and more as we are opening.

The political fallout the Swedish government will face over having so much more dead than Denmark and Norway is likely going to destroy their current government and lead to a further increase of their right-wing populist party.

So yeah, there are countries that didn’t close down hard, but they look royally fucked because of it. I think the only country where the government failed where the current administration is gaining popularity is the US. For some reason.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#257

Post by simtel20 »

renewiltord wrote: post #93
fibers wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should lobby your government to ban ads then.

That sounds like a foolish use of my time when I can simply watch other people do it for me. And I want a greater difference between me and them. I want them to be wrong and for me to be right. This only helps.

I can only see this being the case if you exist in a community which is a zero-sum competition for resources. This is not the world as I understand it, and I can't understand why you thinks this helps.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#258

Post by TekMol »

chvid wrote: post #251
TekMol wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This must be a misunderstanding. Let me rephrase my question: Why did the LA Times revenue get "nearly eliminated" while I don't see a change at all? The ads I see on my website seem to advertise all kinds of random stuff, so it is not like I am targeting a specific niche. Maybe some other HN users with websites that feature ads can chime in and tell their experience?

There was an earlier discussion here of youtubers seeing traffic growth but total revenue drop hinting at lower advertisement through Google as well. But "nearly eliminated" sounds like a lot.

Hmm... I cannot find it. Do you have the link?

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#259

Post by donohoe »

Justin_K wrote: post #161
donohoe wrote: post #159

Dear HN, Support journalism. Subscribe for a month and see how it works for you. https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-evergre...

Why does your paper have to be so one sided though? I live in LA and won't subscribe because your paper has always followed an agenda.

My paper? I live in NYC.

One sided? There is a quote (forget who) "Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias". I'll leave it at that.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#260

Post by TekMol »

TekMol wrote: post #240

I run a website that is monetized via Adsense and I do not see a negative impact of the Corona pandemic. What makes the situation so much different for the L.A. Times then for a website?

Upon closer inspection I see that cost per click is down quite a bit. But the increased traffic makes up for it.

Strange, I would think that in the current times, the value of a visitor is higher for many companies. If they sell digital goods and services, people should have more time now for those.

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