Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#41

Post by nojito » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #33

rectang wrote: post #27

Although it's regrettable that Reuters' content will be harder to access, it's a positive trend for the news ecosystem to generate increasing revenue through a subscription-based business model rather than selling ads. The more money that comes from subscriptions, the more that news coverage will reflect the interests of subscribers rather than advertisers.

In my very personal opinion, based on the New York Times this isn't necessarily a good thing. Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage. (and Fox is just as bad, but its not an online publication for the sake of my point)

>Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage

Equating one of the premier news organizations in the world with Fox is quite interesting.

NYTimes has been breaking news stories since the Civil War. They are the only organization that routinely breaks news against 'both sides' of the aisle. e.g. Clinton Email server and Trump business ties to name a couple

The fact of the matter is that people can not differentiate the opinion pieces from their hard hitting news pieces. Which is a symptom of the low quality "social media news" that currently exists.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#42

Post by nicklecompte » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #22

"audiences prepared to pay $34.99 per month for a deeper level of coverage" Holy crap...who is this audience? NYT is $4/month, WAPO is $4-6/month, etc. Edit: Ah, okay, intro pricing that shifts to ~$17/month after a year. Still, though, that's half of this proposed pricing.

Although the comparison to NYT/WaPo makes some superficial sense, there is a big difference between a newspaper and a news agency like Reuters or AP.

I don’t know much about the journalism business, but I expect Reuters is catering towards a smaller, premium audience that reads a lot of straight news but doesn’t care so much about criticism, commentary, and so on. In particular: reporters and academics, for whom this will be a business expense.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#43

Post by simmonmt » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #32

bombcar wrote: post #2

"Reuters.com will remain free for a preview period, but will require users to register after five stories. It is not immediately clear when it will begin charging." Reuters reporting about Reuters in the third person is amusing. "We asked ourselves when we would begin charging but we didn't know."

Does anyone pay for these kind of sites? I just can’t imagine doing it. I already have streaming subscriptions I just cannot imagine paying for news. I know that is a problem for the internet and journalism in general but what person will buy a Reuters sub? I can maybe see a NY Times sub or WSJ for some people but it has to be the best of the best. And still I personally wouldn’t do it. I don’t need to know news. It’…

I suspect people whose living depends on keeping up with the news will pay. Consider Bloomberg, FT, WSJ, etc. Many people pay for those, and for good reason.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#44

Post by shaan7 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #40

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone pay for these kind of sites? I just can’t imagine doing it. I already have streaming subscriptions I just cannot imagine paying for news. I know that is a problem for the internet and journalism in general but what person will buy a Reuters sub? I can maybe see a NY Times sub or WSJ for some people but it has to be the best of the best. And still I personally wouldn’t do it. I don’t need to know news. It’…

I pay for NPR. I mean, I know that's different because their content isn't behind a paywall. My mom pays for the NYT, but I think that's mostly for access to their cooking site. I think these big news companies need to form a federation or something where you buy access at one and get rights to read over multiple different magazines.

> I think these big news companies need to form a federation or something where you buy access at one and get rights to read over multiple different magazines.

Exactly! I tried coil.com for a while and it would be amazing if you could pay a monthly subscription and then it distributes to articles that you end up reading.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#45

Post by beervirus » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

nojito wrote: post #41

zpeti wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my very personal opinion, based on the New York Times this isn't necessarily a good thing. Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage. (and Fox is just as bad, but its not an online publication for the sake of my point)

>Yes they cater to their subscribers but that's made them batshit crazy in their coverage Equating one of the premier news organizations in the world with Fox is quite interesting. NYTimes has been breaking news stories since the Civil War. They are the only organization that routinely breaks news against 'both sides' of the aisle. e.g. Clinton Email server and Trump business ties to name a couple The fact of the mat…

> The fact of the matter is that people can not differentiate the opinion pieces from their hard hitting news pieces.

They intentionally blur that line. Almost all of their news pieces the last several years have been full of opinion.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#46

Post by diveandfight » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #40

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone pay for these kind of sites? I just can’t imagine doing it. I already have streaming subscriptions I just cannot imagine paying for news. I know that is a problem for the internet and journalism in general but what person will buy a Reuters sub? I can maybe see a NY Times sub or WSJ for some people but it has to be the best of the best. And still I personally wouldn’t do it. I don’t need to know news. It’…

I pay for NPR. I mean, I know that's different because their content isn't behind a paywall. My mom pays for the NYT, but I think that's mostly for access to their cooking site. I think these big news companies need to form a federation or something where you buy access at one and get rights to read over multiple different magazines.

Apple News+? I know it's not necessarily the most popular or well thought of, but it's the only widespread platform (I'm aware of) that provides that kind of service for the price point I'm wiling to pay; i.e., Netflix-ish monthly fee.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#47

Post by beervirus » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #27

Although it's regrettable that Reuters' content will be harder to access, it's a positive trend for the news ecosystem to generate increasing revenue through a subscription-based business model rather than selling ads. The more money that comes from subscriptions, the more that news coverage will reflect the interests of subscribers rather than advertisers.

It's not either-or. Plenty of companies make money through subscriptions, and later on add the adtech garbage back in.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#48

Post by Xenoamorphous » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #32

bombcar wrote: post #2

"Reuters.com will remain free for a preview period, but will require users to register after five stories. It is not immediately clear when it will begin charging." Reuters reporting about Reuters in the third person is amusing. "We asked ourselves when we would begin charging but we didn't know."

Does anyone pay for these kind of sites? I just can’t imagine doing it. I already have streaming subscriptions I just cannot imagine paying for news. I know that is a problem for the internet and journalism in general but what person will buy a Reuters sub? I can maybe see a NY Times sub or WSJ for some people but it has to be the best of the best. And still I personally wouldn’t do it. I don’t need to know news. It’…

They seem to be aiming at professionals, although it also says they're after their current audience, whatever that is.

> the newly revamped Reuters.com www.reuters.com is hoping to attract professional audiences prepared to pay $34.99 per month for a deeper level of coverage and data on industry verticals

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#49

Post by nicklecompte » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #11

james-bcn wrote: post #9

This reduces the number of reliable and reasonably neutral news sources accessible to the majority of people, which is a bad thing.

I would not call Reuters neutral. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

The “controversies” section in the Wikipedia article doesn’t point to any coherent bias in Reuters or deliberate organization-wide ideological judgments. I am really not sure what you are trying to say other than “one of the largest news agencies in the world has made mistakes” which... ok?

It is true that Reuters tends to hew towards US-centric conventional politics and sometimes has problems with politically-biased reporters and editors. This is endemic to any news organization run by Americans, and similar issues will arise in any non-partisan news agency. Reuters is only “non-neutral” in the sense that any news organization will have some ideological baggage and some viewpoint.

It is useful to keep this in mind when reading any particular story, since any journalist is capable of bias and any story should be read critically. It is not useful to pretend that this human imperfection is somehow a problem with Reuters. It seems like an unfair (and dangerous) way to discredit legitimate journalism.

Re: Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy

#50

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #22

"audiences prepared to pay $34.99 per month for a deeper level of coverage" Holy crap...who is this audience? NYT is $4/month, WAPO is $4-6/month, etc. Edit: Ah, okay, intro pricing that shifts to ~$17/month after a year. Still, though, that's half of this proposed pricing.

Yeah, somebody really needs to solve the micropayments problem for real. I have no problem paying for content, but there is no way in hell I'm paying $35 a month for a Reuters subscription just to read one or two articles a month. And same for NYT, WSJ, yadda, yadda, yadda. I mean... if we all paid for monthly subscriptions for every news site we read a couple of articles a month from, we'd be paying $600 / month just for news. I think that merits a "C'mon, man" response.

If nothing else maybe these sites could have plans that are tiered somehow, instead of going from "5 free a month (but you have to register and give us your info)" straight to "35.00 a month for unlimited." Give us "$3.00 a month for 10 articles, or $8.00 a month for 20 articles" tiered plan options or something.