

The New Yorker Alters Its Online Strategy - Doubleguitars
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/business/media/the-new-yorker-alters-its-online-strategy.html

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hackuser
Isn't the real problem a lack of good micro-payment systems? I think the vast
majority of readers would be happy to pay 10 cents or 50 cents for an article,
if it didn't take $20 of their time to do it (e.g., create account, login,
enter credit card, etc.). Look at how many people happily paid for downloading
music once it was made easy enough (i.e., via iTunes).

What ever happened to micro-payments, which once were the next big thing?

~~~
gabemart
I've always thought the biggest problem with micropayments is the mental cost
of deciding whether or not to purchase something. Decisions are painful, and
deciding whether or not to spend $0.20 online isn't much less painful that
deciding to spend $2.00 or $20.00 online. The pain of deciding whether or not
to spend $0.20 far, far outweighs the value of the $0.20 to me. This suggests
micropayments are an inefficient payment system.

Being asked whether or not I want to spend $0.25 or $0.50 twenty or fifty
times a day is not an appealing prospect.

In short, don't make me think.

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mcherm
There is a solution to that problem -- pay AFTER reading the article. Now you
don't have to predict the article's value; you know what it was.

This solution comes with its own problem: after reading, there is absolutely
no incentive to pay other than good will. And most won't pay.

~~~
eevilspock
I've been thinking about an idea that would solve this: Readers subscribe to a
federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. After they read
an article, they can click either a "worth it", "meh" or "garbage" button. At
the end of the month, all subscription fees are distributed to each publisher
proportional to their "worth it" votes. This will drive up quality. If
"garbage" votes are penalized, it will discourage bad content as well as link-
baiting, dishonest titles or any other gaming of traffic.

The primary impetus is to get the internet off of advertising. It's an
absolute fallacy that ads give us content and services for free. It actually
makes the web much more expensive:

 _1._ The advertisers who pay google get their money from us, added to the
prices of the things we buy. There is no free lunch.

 _2._ The overhead cost of advertising is huge and we pay for that too.

 _3._ We pay the opportunity cost of a product that cannot put users first
because they live or die by giving advertisers what they want (and what we
want indirectly and secondarily). This includes both the cost of lost privacy
as well as well as design that optimizes advertising revenue. As has been
said, we are more Google's products than we are their customers.

 _4._ We pay the social costs. Democracy and the free market assume people
make voting and purchasing decisions based on facts and reason. Advertising as
predominantly about manipulation and deceit. I believe this is the most
expensive cost of services that rely on advertising revenue.

Added together, we are paying a lot more for "free" web searches and email
than if we could just straight up pay Google for straight-up ad-free versions.

[This is a condensed version of a more detailed case with reference links that
I made here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)]

~~~
mcherm
I like this idea. I'm sure there are flaws that need to be tackled (Should we
discount the votes of the leechers who vote "meh" on everything to avoid
paying? Would this encourage publishers to post lots of short articles instead
of long thoughtful ones to raise revenues?). Look at flattr for an
implementation similar to this in some ways. But in general, I think this is
an excellent idea and should be tried.

~~~
eevilspock
Certainly there are details that need to be thought through, but I believe
I've covered the important questions you raise:

 _> Should we discount the votes of the leechers who vote "meh" on everything
to avoid paying?_

Unlike flatter, subscribers pay monthly, up front. Voting does not affect how
much you pay, only how your flat payment is distributed across the publishers
in the collective. It is thus impossible to leach. If a subscriber honestly
votes "meh" on everything because all the content is (to her) truly meh, then
she should probably discontinue her subscription. That is as it should be. The
free market mechanism applies not just to comparative success of publishers
within this collective, but the collective as a whole. If the collective
cannot retain a sufficient number of subscribers, it _should_ fail.

 _> Would this encourage publishers to post lots of short articles instead of
long thoughtful ones to raise revenues?_

Good point. Clearly we should remove the "if" from my statement about
"garbage" votes, which are explicitly designed to penalize any and all gaming,
as determined by the subscribers. If subscribers detect such behavior (We
would encourage such a critical attitude among the subscriber community
culture) they should vote "meh" or "garbage" depending on the degree of
offense.

But what if those many short articles were actually good? Should five short
articles get the same share of subscription fees as one long thoughtful one?
I'd like to leave this in the hands of the subscribers, but also keep the
system simple. Maybe we allow greater than +1 for "worth it" votes, which
would increase that article's share of revenue, and may or may not increase
it's ranking in any recommendation system that we include in this system.

I've had this idea for over a year (along with many others intended to get us
off this advertising addiction). Maybe I (or we!) should get this moving! If
you or anyone else is interested, whether to flesh out the idea, evangelize
it, or build it, shoot me an email.

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chuckcode
I really hope they improve the app as well. Great articles in print but app
was almost unusable last year when I tried to do a digital only subscription.

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menubar
What ever happened to advertising as a form of revenue?

In print publishing, all newspaper/magazine articles are typically space
filler to direct your attention path to the accompanying ads.

With a decent sales staff and correct ad pricing there should be no reason to
charge users to read an article online. Sure, printing costs are high, but
repurposing content for online publication is cheaper by an order of
magnitudes.

I've been in (newspaper/magazine) publishing over 30 years. I surfed through
the waves of insanity when the internet started to become ubiquitous and
publishers were pulling their hair out over fears that it would be the death
of them. It's nothing more than an excuse for greed. It could have been
handled properly by establishing ad revenue pricing structures early on, but
it was easier for them to cry, complain and voluntarily remain ignorant of new
tech while the owners of the publications bemoaned that their paper
publication is not making enough money to stay afloat and keep their trophy
wives in sport cars and designer jewelry at the same time.

I have no pity on these ignorant fools. If the New York Times goes
bankrupt/offline it won't affect my life one bit. Other, more fiscally
responsible individuals/organizations/bloggers will fill the niche and do it
right.

~~~
eevilspock
First, are you actually saying charging people for something they consume
directly instead of charging them indirectly through advertising[1] is greed?
Does that mean my corner grocer is greedy for asking me to pay for my milk
rather than slapping ads all over the carton?

Second, I'm amazed that you decry greed and in the same breadth promote
advertising. I don't know whether to cry or laugh. Advertising is
predominantly (some would say almost entirely) manipulative and dishonest.

-

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

