51–60 of 61 posts
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The coffee shops most likely paid for those subscriptions.
And then could do whatever they like with them unlike the digital equivalent
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…
There's not enough time in the day for someone with a different full time job to properly inform themselves on every issue, so, in theory, news publications pay people to make that their full time job.
Unfortunately, that's not actually what most people want out of news, and is not something most people are actually willing to pay for, so the average quality of the product has quietly degraded over the years, catalyzed by digital media trends in general and sharply hastened in 2016.
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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...
Something that works in a similar way, by using blockchain to record site views per person and allowing cooperating websites to cash in on the views would be my preference.
I imagine that there would be other issues like people impersonating other people and spending their web views, or people setting up "fake" sites and then using dark methods to redirect page views to their site, siphoning off user cash from websites that actually add value, just for starters.
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…
It's probably true that if you're good enough at evaluating sources, you can find superior technical detail from a free source than from traditional news. The theoretical purpose of traditional news is to be a reputable clearinghouse for skilled researchers and source evaluators to find good enough sources for a wide variety of things. There's not enough time in the day for someone with a different full time job to p…
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It's probably true that if you're good enough at evaluating sources, you can find superior technical detail from a free source than from traditional news. The theoretical purpose of traditional news is to be a reputable clearinghouse for skilled researchers and source evaluators to find good enough sources for a wide variety of things. There's not enough time in the day for someone with a different full time job to p…
When I read a news story on something I already know about, it generally sounds like sophomoric hogwash. I have to assume the stories that I know little about are also hogwash. I.e., an argument that a newspaper is vetting information makes little sense to me.
I don't want Google and the likes to become more powerful either, but some kind of consolidated access to all such information might be a better approach for the news consumer. Perhaps some kind of pay per "article" model might work better.
I would have been more willing to pay something like 25 cents per article if there was a universal access model.
I suprise myself saying this, but AOL model was probably a more consumer friendly approach...
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Historically you could read any newspaper for free. It would be left all over the place: at work, at cafes, on the bus seat. Short of that you could go to like a grocery store where the paper is kept in a rack not a box, read all you want, and put it back. Libraries had papers too. Today publishers want an unprecedented level of restriction to solely the subscribers. News was never like this but they are trying to re…
>Libraries had papers too. Have. Practically every public library in the US (over 17,000 as of right now) currently, today, has online access to local and national newspapers. My public library offers free online access to the following national newspapers: Atlanta Journal-Constitution The Atlantic (HAH!) The Chicago Tribune The Los Angeles Times The New York Times USA Today The Wall Street Journal They also offer ac…
Kinda funny that this article gets cut off by a paywall
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It's probably true that if you're good enough at evaluating sources, you can find superior technical detail from a free source than from traditional news. The theoretical purpose of traditional news is to be a reputable clearinghouse for skilled researchers and source evaluators to find good enough sources for a wide variety of things. There's not enough time in the day for someone with a different full time job to p…
When I read a news story on something I already know about, it generally sounds like sophomoric hogwash. I have to assume the stories that I know little about are also hogwash. I.e., an argument that a newspaper is vetting information makes little sense to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Historically you could read any newspaper for free. It would be left all over the place: at work, at cafes, on the bus seat. Short of that you could go to like a grocery store where the paper is kept in a rack not a box, read all you want, and put it back. Libraries had papers too. Today publishers want an unprecedented level of restriction to solely the subscribers. News was never like this but they are trying to re…
As far as I remember things, newspapers used to carry a lot of advertising. And the face value of a newspaper was more-or-less a nominal amount, I suspect largely to support the distribution network. I don't recall ever seeing a newspaper lying around with ads cut out or scribbled over - which I guess is a simplistic analog of the ad-blockers and such that modern news outlets are up against. You can understand the pu…