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Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

theatlantic.com

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Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#41

Post by landgenoot »

BizarroLand wrote: post #30
usr1106 wrote: post #6

Requesting free journalism is like requesting free food. Both are essential, but few would expect food being distributed for free. Subscriptions are fine, I pay for several. But they don't fit every use case. There should be a way to pay for a single article. Some micropayment service(s) so you don't need an account with every web site you might want to read. It has been tried numerous time without success. Not sure…

For me, the right concept would be that rather than pay every website I want to go to $10, $20 or even $50 / month for the at most 3 articles that I would read that I would have an add on in my browser that would pay a fraction of a penny to each website I visit. Then it would be up to me. Do I want to put $10/month into browsing the internet without paywalls? Sure, fine, then I get an ad or two but I would have acce…

I wrote a PoC / master thesis exactly on this idea + the lightning network to support micro transactions. The revenue distribution is the hardest thing to solve. My approach was to have a rolling budget and spending it percentage wise in real time per page view.

https://lightning-sprinkle.github.io/master-thesis/thesis/ma...

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#42

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

usr1106 wrote: post #6

Requesting free journalism is like requesting free food. Both are essential, but few would expect food being distributed for free. Subscriptions are fine, I pay for several. But they don't fit every use case. There should be a way to pay for a single article. Some micropayment service(s) so you don't need an account with every web site you might want to read. It has been tried numerous time without success. Not sure…

Yeah food should be free that would be good.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#43

Post by reducesuffering »

usr1106 wrote: post #6

Requesting free journalism is like requesting free food. Both are essential, but few would expect food being distributed for free. Subscriptions are fine, I pay for several. But they don't fit every use case. There should be a way to pay for a single article. Some micropayment service(s) so you don't need an account with every web site you might want to read. It has been tried numerous time without success. Not sure…

I'm a pro-market person. However, these are the problems I see, and similar ones are what led us to government fund so much of education.

Independent "purely get to the truth" journalism, that people access, is a bedrock of a well functioning society. It's another form of an educated populace. I think what we're seeing right now is that a smaller and smaller upper middle class people are able to read a variety of sources to stay well informed, while most will now never pay or read informed articles. We all vote, so we should want everyone to have easy access to good sources. Instead, now most people purely consume low quality clickbait "for the ad revenue" drivel, and I see that is a contributor to society's poor understanding of the world around them in general.

So, I see government paying to make quality journalism accessible the same way I see education. We know that removing K-12 public school and state universities would be an unmitigated disaster in many of peoples' abilities to think, though they will still vote.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#44

Post by reducesuffering »

achow wrote: post #9
usr1106 wrote: post #6

Requesting free journalism is like requesting free food. Both are essential, but few would expect food being distributed for free. Subscriptions are fine, I pay for several. But they don't fit every use case. There should be a way to pay for a single article. Some micropayment service(s) so you don't need an account with every web site you might want to read. It has been tried numerous time without success. Not sure…

I always wondered if Spotify could do it for music (which I think are much more zealously protected), why there is no similar service for news articles? Is it because a news article is one time consumption, whereas music is not?

Music and articles aren't so different in time based consumption. Most music is short term, like 90% listener fall off within 6 months. Though there are still classics that maintain relevancy, just as there are articles that stay relevant.

Spotify is a great example though, because people would find it preposterous to pay $10/mth to listen to each band they wanted to.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#45

Post by LeroyRaz »

The quality of most (nearly all) media is (embarrassingly) poor though. You often find more serious reporting on YouTube than in the press!! For example, the YouTuber CoffeeZilla gave a far more earnest coverage of SBF than any newspaper I came across.

Similarly, I think I would rather read a blog written by an expert on their area of expertise (for free) than read a newspaper's (sloppy) filtering of that.

And, if I care deeply enough about a topic, I would rather read a book about it. What service do these newspapers think they serve?

To corrupt an adage, I honestly think the best reporting is generally free (e.g. coffeezilla, e.g., excellent in-depth podcasts, e.g. many excellent articles and essays linked via HackerNews, etc...) and the second best is more expensive than most newspapers can afford to be (e.g., a book).

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

usr1106 wrote: post #6

Requesting free journalism is like requesting free food. Both are essential, but few would expect food being distributed for free. Subscriptions are fine, I pay for several. But they don't fit every use case. There should be a way to pay for a single article. Some micropayment service(s) so you don't need an account with every web site you might want to read. It has been tried numerous time without success. Not sure…

> should be a way to pay for a single article

It fundamentally doesn’t work due to journalism, particularly investigative journalism, having high fixed and sporadic costs. Consider the trivial example of defending ones’ journalists against a lawsuit. You can’t easily borrow against clickstream revenue.

Caveat: it could work, but at effectively a a few months’ subscription price per article.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#47

Post by JumpCrisscross »

LeroyRaz wrote: post #45

The quality of most (nearly all) media is (embarrassingly) poor though. You often find more serious reporting on YouTube than in the press!! For example, the YouTuber CoffeeZilla gave a far more earnest coverage of SBF than any newspaper I came across. Similarly, I think I would rather read a blog written by an expert on their area of expertise (for free) than read a newspaper's (sloppy) filtering of that. And, if I…

> YouTuber CoffeeZilla gave a far more earnest coverage of SBF than any newspaper I came across

Do you pay for any journalism? Or are you comparing the ad-supported cruft to YouTube?

YouTube has great information. But BloombergLaw, for example, remains a far more decisive source than CoffeeZilla. I say this as someone who participated in the FTX estate’s bankruptcy process as an asset purchaser.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#48

Post by mrkramer »

News paywalls are deeply problematic because when you "surf" the Web and when you stumble upon some paywalled article, you are either stuck (blocked from viewing the content) and you leave or you view the paywalled article in "pirated" version via our "beloved" archive.is. This dynamic is not good for a news industry as a whole.

I never subscribed to a newspaper and I don't know what exactly drives an average Joe to subscribe to one but my assumption is that one or two paywalled articles won't drive someone to subscribe to the newspaper, it would rather frustrate them to get stuck and blocked from reading. Either you will subscribe because of the word of mouth and perceived reputation of the newspaper or you will subscribe because your favorite author is writing for the newspaper you want to subscribe. That's why I find it mind boggling that for example The Economist's news articles are anonymous and not signed by authors.

My suggested solutions are: 1. Make old news articles free and really new ones paywalled or 2. Introduce micropayments for each article (for example 10 cents to unlock an article for lifetime) or 3. Aggregate all paywalled articles across different newspapers to some news aggregator and then ask people to subscribe.

Tbh, I'm a huge fan of independent journalism and internet blogging which are free and either ad-supported or donation supported.

Re: Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls – Paywalled

#50

Post by LeroyRaz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47
LeroyRaz wrote: post #45

The quality of most (nearly all) media is (embarrassingly) poor though. You often find more serious reporting on YouTube than in the press!! For example, the YouTuber CoffeeZilla gave a far more earnest coverage of SBF than any newspaper I came across. Similarly, I think I would rather read a blog written by an expert on their area of expertise (for free) than read a newspaper's (sloppy) filtering of that. And, if I…

> YouTuber CoffeeZilla gave a far more earnest coverage of SBF than any newspaper I came across Do you pay for any journalism? Or are you comparing the ad-supported cruft to YouTube? YouTube has great information. But BloombergLaw, for example, remains a far more decisive source than CoffeeZilla. I say this as someone who participated in the FTX estate’s bankruptcy process as an asset purchaser.

I've read many paywalled articles. HackerNews generally links an archive link, and I also occasionally use institutional access. However, I don't subscribe personally to any news sites.

Often, when I do read paywalled articles, I feel embarrassed by how poor they are. On most topics I'm actually informed on, e.g., my area of work, or say reporting on a fully videod courtroom case I've been following, they come across as incredibly ignorant. This is mainly the general newsites though, e.g., the Atlantic, etc...

I might check out BloombergLaw. So far, I think the only news providers I respect, are BellingCat (I thought their work with navalny was incredible), PrivateEye (consistently princibled - and funny - satyrists) and I also have a softspot for the BBC.

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