
Solution to the Journalism Crisis - GnarfGnarf
I believe that quality writing deserves to be rewarded. I am happy to pay the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, etc. an affordable amount for a specific article (50¢, $1.00 ?). However, flat monthly subscriptions are not practical.<p>For example, NYT is $50&#x2F;yr, WSJ is $100&#x2F;yr, Bloomberg $420&#x2F;yr, LA Times $98&#x2F;yr, The Guardian £119&#x2F;yr, WaPo ~$80&#x2F;yr. These are all fine publications, and I have no doubt each is well worth the price. However, I do not have time to take full advantage of all the channels if I were to subscribe (which I can&#x27;t afford), and I don&#x27;t want to limit myself to one paper. I want to pick and choose random articles from any publication.<p>What if I could pay on a per-article basis? I wouldn&#x27;t have a problem paying 50¢ or $1.00 for an article I was interested in. It&#x27;s not practical for each publisher to set up micro-payments. But, if there were an intermediate agent that accepted and managed payments for individual random articles, the money could be aggregated and remitted in a lump sum to the publishers. Sort of like an old-fashioned news stand.<p>The middleman could accept PayPal payments, or I could open an account with my credit card, and pay once a month for all the individual articles I have read.<p>Sounds like a business opportunity. Is anyone doing this?
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sigmaprimus
I honestly giggled a bit when I read this. I think your heart is in the right
place but adding another level of "Middle Men" to take a share of the money
probably isn't going to solve things.

What might work is a "middle-man" between publishers offering a multi-
pulbisher subscription system similar to what cable television providers
currently do, though that model seems to be dying too (think cord cutters) and
really doesn't solve the crisis either but might be a buisness opportunity.

Personally I think what has happened to journalists and is currently happening
to television personalities is the elimination of a class of people(for good
or bad the 4th estate is not as valuable in a connected world), the other
night I watched SNL attempt to create their show with clips from the staff at
home, and compared to what I already watch on Youtube it was OK at best.

Is it possible journalists have just had it too good for too long? Similar but
to a leser extent to how the music record industry had it Pre-Napster?

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detaro
afaik blendle.com is trying this, with mixed success.

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GnarfGnarf
Sounds interesting. They appear to link to NYT, WSJ, The New Yorker. However,
the interface is in Dutch, no English option. Are they offering full access,
or just insipid subset?

I tried to create account, but the prompts soon became incomprehensible.

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detaro
oh weird. Seems like
[https://launch.blendle.com/](https://launch.blendle.com/) is their starting
page for the US market?

As far as I remember you can read everything from partner publications, but
need to go there through their site or app.

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GnarfGnarf
Excellent. Thanks for the link. They are in Beta so I can't evaluate yet. If
they're doing what I think they're doing, that's exactly what I'm looking for.
However, if the original newspapers only allow Blendle access to a subset of
their material, this won't cut it. I need to be able to go directly from a HN
link to any NYT article, or at least access the same article through my
Blendle subscription.

Time magazine failed in this respect with Roku. I got all excited until I saw
what dreck Time was restricting us to.

