Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model • Hacker News Board

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#41

Post by dwohnitmok » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #37

MRD85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doesn't physically cost any practical amount of money to read an article, a tiny amount of processing power and data transfer. A physical meal costs orders of magnitude more. I understand why we should pay for articles but if you enforce payment then you'll see a flood of poorly written click bait and a race to the bottom.

What about payment with a refund option? Obviously this could be abused (and likely would be), but I'd think most people would only use the refund option if the article was truly terrible / clickbait.

Or a variant, give a reader the option to deny paying the media outlet within some time window, but the reader doesn't get any of the money back.

This does mean the payment processor and the outlet have to be independent entities. That, though, nicely opens up another possibility of what to do with that money that is denied: distribute it proportionally to all other articles from all other media outlets. Proportionate to what is also a question, but I suspect proportionate to non-denied payment from the processor makes the most sense.

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#42

Post by fouric » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #2

> Like many, I was wrong about the subscription model for the news media. I thought that a possible scheme for subscriptions could be: one for national media, in the $12–20 a month range, another, less expensive ($5–$9/month) for local news, and the last one for specialized content, whether it is a business or a leisure publication. I can't imagine how that could ever have worked. Back in the day, I mostly read stuff…

I, personally, would either want to pay per article or for a single subscription service to a news organization. If given the choice between having 3 or more accounts+subscriptions (let alone 20) to juggle, and not consuming news at all, I would choose the latter, and I suspect that many Americans would, too.

For the record, Blendle[1] tried the pay-per-article model a few years ago, and was unsuccessful. Not sure if they executed it poorly or the model itself is unsustainable, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#43

Post by jandrese » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #3

mirimir wrote: post #2

> Like many, I was wrong about the subscription model for the news media. I thought that a possible scheme for subscriptions could be: one for national media, in the $12–20 a month range, another, less expensive ($5–$9/month) for local news, and the last one for specialized content, whether it is a business or a leisure publication. I can't imagine how that could ever have worked. Back in the day, I mostly read stuff…

I don't want to pay for all of the articles I read, a large number of them are terrible and shouldn't be encouraged.

What if the system paid for articles read automatically, but there was a button you could use to negate the fee? So if you click something and it turns out to be clickbait or some other trash you can retroactively revoke the payment. Make the process just painful enough (maybe a CAPCHA) to discourage abuse and it might work. Most people are honest and if the fees are reasonable they won't go to the effort to revoke them every time. The few that do revoke every fee weren't going to pay in the first place and at least this might discourage them from setting up an underground service to duplicate your content wholesale.

On the other hand most people don't like getting nickled and dimed to death.

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#44

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #39

siffland wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If i am going to pay to read an article, then there better be no tracking cookies, no sharing with 3rd parties and no ads on the page of the article i am reading. If not i might as well read the same content on another site.

Presumably you're running an adblocker - so what does it matter?

I highly doubt my adblocker is 100% effective. There's also the common decency of being respectful to your customer. Why should I support a company who treats me like a resource to be extracted?

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#45

Post by factotvm » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #27

factotvm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not suggesting that it will work (to pay per article as we’re describing). But the idea that you should get something for free because you don’t like it isn’t how most things work. Caveat emptor. Conversely, people said it didn’t cost any practical amount of money to listen to music, yet Spotify thrives.

Spotify thrives because it is more convenient than piracy.

And what is more convenient than an ad blocker?

Re: Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model

#46

Post by mcphage » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

the_trapper wrote: post #15

pessimizer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of articles don't nourish me, they make me stupider. I wouldn't pay for a poisoned meal.

To continue this analogy. When I go to a restaurant and order a steak I don't get told by the waiter that I should really be eating vegan gluten free instead. What really bothers me the most about modern "news" is that a lot of it is really just biased political commentary and editorials masquerading as news.

> What really bothers me the most about modern "news"

Wait until you learn about the origin of the term "yellow journalism".