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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’

#371

Post by gruturo »

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.

> 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.

You do realize that there are so few cases because of the lockdown, and otherwise those cases would not only be an order of magnitude higher, but also much much MUCH more likely to result in death because the medical system would be entirely saturated and unable to admit 80% of the people who show up ?

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

#372

Post by CydeWeys »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

This is a reasonable suggestion. I too hit paywalls on all those papers several times per month and more, but not remotely enough to be worth paying a full subscription to almost any of them save the NYT (which I do have a shared family subscription to). A newspaper passport that allows some form of limited access to all of them, like a multi-resort annual ski passport, would be pretty useful.

I would expect said passport to cost in the range of $100-200 per year (though they'd want to bill it at something like $15 per month to avoid sticker shock), and allow me to read a good number of articles from each newspaper, but maybe not an unlimited amount. And the funds from the passport could be distributed proportionally to members based on which papers you actually read most frequently, like how a ski mountain passport works.

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

#373

Post by CydeWeys »

pgrote wrote: post #370
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

>I don't want to subscribe to just one paper. There are so many good articles in all the papers. A few years back I just went ahead and subscribed to the ones I wanted to support to try to support journalism. It was more affordable than I thought, but there is friction to keep them from taking advantage of you. For instance, at one point it was cheaper for me to subscribe to the Sunday edition of the NY Times to get…

> For instance, at one point it was cheaper for me to subscribe to the Sunday edition of the NY Times to get digital access than just digital access. I live 1000 miles from New York City.

The New York Times has nationwide printing and delivery in a lot of cities, so that's actually not that surprising. My parents had it delivered when I was growing up, and that was hundreds of miles from NYC. There's very few other papers that this is true of.

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

#374

Post by wccrawford »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

I suspect that most people, like me, don't want to be "nickel and dimed" for their news. There are very few articles that I want to read bad enough to pay $1 for. Almost as few for $.50.

For $50/yr, that means I could read 1 NYT article per week, or I could have the yearly subscription. If I care about that newspaper at all, the subscription makes a lot more sense.

The others are more like 2/wk instead, but still, if I'm only reading 2 articles per week from them, that seems really low.

But even if the price per article made economic sense, there's psychology to worry about. I can't find them at the moment, but I've read articles detailing that people will pick the 'unlimited' option over the cheaper per-piece option even when they know they'd pay less in the long run on the per-piece.

So while you might prefer to buy each article, that's generally not how people work.

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

#375

Post by CydeWeys »

ericmay wrote: post #365
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

> Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? Isn't that what products like Apple News are?

Apple News+ isn't exactly the same thing. It's more targeted at magazines, and doesn't have most of the relevant newspapers on board. But there are other issues:

1. It's run by Apple, which takes a hefty cut, and is thus oriented towards whatever is in Apple's best interests. It should be run by a consortium of newspapers instead and work in their best interest.

2. It's only available on Apple devices, which I don't have.

3. It has an app-based model. That's not what I want. What I want is an SSO passport login that lets me into all of the publisher's pre-existing sites. I don't want an app or a new site or anything, I just want a login that works on the existing newspaper sites.

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

#376

Post by CydeWeys »

frockington1 wrote: post #297
dx034 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a few quarters. They'll survive and be back where they are now when the economy bounces back (whenever that may be). They could take a 100% cut for several quarters without cutting expenses. Small ad companies are the ones that will really suffer. They don't have Google's deep pockets and diversification.

Facebook will be in a great position with people having more and more phone time due to the quarantine. Might be a short term hit but a big boost down the road

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are seeing record usage (i.e. increased costs) at exactly the same time that advertising revenue is plunging. YouTube watches are at record highs while pays per view might be at record lows. This just means that the expenses go up even as revenue falls. It's not a good thing for profitability.

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

#377

Post by DeathArrow »

dx034 wrote: post #291
xhkkffbf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google and Facebook are going to deliver a very surprising result.

For a few quarters. They'll survive and be back where they are now when the economy bounces back (whenever that may be). They could take a 100% cut for several quarters without cutting expenses. Small ad companies are the ones that will really suffer. They don't have Google's deep pockets and diversification.

Until then people might learn that an online experience without ads is possible.

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

#378

Post by AtlasBarfed »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

a... micropayments platform? Maybe regulated by a cryptocurrency or embedded blockchain based on eyeball tracking? That would analyze the articles you like and dynamically assemble articles that are related? That would collect "quality" ratings on the article based on how deep you scrolled into it?

Outside all the tech wordsoup I just spouted, there is real potential in that. Maybe it needs to be couched in an independent rating group that advertisers somewhat trust (aka Nielsen in TV land), that could actually drive legitimate ad revenue/investment.

It is strange, given that all newspapers are facing the same apocalypse now for a decade, and they (I think?) were subject to the same media consolidation that affected other channels.

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

#379

Post by CydeWeys »

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?

You're not even in the position to see the change, is the issue. The cost per click on all these ads could be way down from what it was a couple months ago and you'd have no idea.

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

#380

Post by jahaja »

kitotik wrote: post #360
techer wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And currently backtracking on.

A couple links to support the parent comment. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1268263/sweden-coronavi... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212365/Swedish-PM-...

Both these are tabloids and uses "considering" & "is looking at" just below the contradictory headlines. I'm Swedish and are browsing Swedish websites. Including the Public Service svt.se.
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