Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

whatsnewinpublishing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 229 posts

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#211

Post by scarface74 »

eli wrote: post #54
qmarchi wrote: post #10

There are going to be people complaining about the new requirement to have an account to view content. To the publishers, you should _really_ use some kind of federated login. Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. but don't forget those who are willing to have a unique account.

As a publisher, there's absolutely no way I'm letting Google, Apple or Facebook manage the identity or control the authentication of my readers.

When you use a federated login, you still can assign an email address to the federated user. Most of them will even pass one to you.

But, do you really want your users to have the added friction and probably just move on to another site, and do you really want the responsibility of providing your own authorization? I work for a B2B SASS company and we highly encourage users to use their company’s AD account that we federate with.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#212

Post by profalseidol »

afastow wrote: post #140
liability wrote: post #124

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamentally broken.

I don't think anyone argues that journalism is in a healthy place today, but what is the alternative? The problem is that real news costs real money to produce. Newspapers could be not-for-profit but their reporters would still need a salary to do their jobs.

DemocracyNow[1] is a good one. 100% free. Noam Chomsky is a regular guest here.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow

I wonder how they make money.

Checked wikipedia:

  Democracy Now Productions, the independent nonprofit 
  organization which produces Democracy Now!, is funded 
  entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, 
  and foundations such as the Ford Foundation,[failed 
  verification] Lannan Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund,[4]
  [5][6][unreliable source?] and does not accept 
  advertisers, corporate underwriting or government 
  funding.[7]
The remark from Bill Clinton is a fun bit:

  Clinton defended his administration's policies and charged 
  Goodman with being "hostile and combative".[51]

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#218

Post by Spivak »

sumedh wrote: post #197
Spivak wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popularity of investigative journalism podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, ProPublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, etc. seem to disprove this theory. Outside of a few exceptional pieces the typical content on print "news" sites is utter garbage. The pressure to have a bunch of different columns publishing multiple stories a day seems like it really drives the quality down. All the super cool long-form investigativ…

> The popularity of investigative journalism Pretty sure sites like buzzfeed and other tabloid news would more popular than the sites which you mentioned.

So? Tabloids have always been popular because they're entertaining. Movies are probably more popular than news too.

And BuzzFeed is a no different than NYT it WaPo at the macro scale. They just have a different idea about what the filler content should look like. Print news is really behind and have been fruitlessly playing catch-up due to a prestigious culture that holds reporting the most boring least relevant news as the highest ideal. The paper should be pushing a handful of super in-depth issues and putting the 'reporting' straight in the archive for news nerds.

NYT's Wirecutter is the most interesting innovation from an old guard news org I've seen in a while and is a good candidate to be some of that filler -- relevant, useful, and sometimes genuinely interesting.

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#219

Post by Traster »

ameixaseca wrote: post #173

I don't see myself subscribing to any newspaper and paying $15+ per month for having a single source of news, usually with a single point of view and/or bias. I would much rather pay a fair amount (more or less $15-$30 per year, which is what I pay on my landline), and then subscribe to a number of them. This for me looks like a more sustainable model, but I guess that's not what their finance departments think.

I'm always shocked when I consider the cost of these things. Each newspaper provides a relatively tiny amount of differentiated content and then each of them want more than a netflix subscription a month? How in the hell do those costs compare?

Re: Google unlocks 33% of publisher paywalls on July 30

#220

Post by Spivak »

manigandham wrote: post #162
Spivak wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popularity of investigative journalism podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, ProPublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, etc. seem to disprove this theory. Outside of a few exceptional pieces the typical content on print "news" sites is utter garbage. The pressure to have a bunch of different columns publishing multiple stories a day seems like it really drives the quality down. All the super cool long-form investigativ…

The people who listen to those are the same people who would be reading it in the first place. They are a fraction of the population.

Other than a few long-form pieces from investigative journalists that show up in my Twitter feed I would never actually read a newspaper. Print news 'content' is uninteresting, unimportant, irrelevant to anything that actually matters most of the time, just as sensationalist as the tabloids, mostly rage bait, and disempowering.

Podcasts where the format is they have to pick a single story to tell for the whole week gets this right. A daily book where on a typical day you can shread the whole thing without looking and not feel like you missed anything is only being kept alive by feaux prestige.

Post reply on HN