
Why subscriptions are the future of journalism - bitslim
https://medium.com/thoughts-on-media/selling-ads-is-a-short-term-strategy-here-s-why-subscriptions-are-the-future-of-journalism-6721226d52ca#.g1o3c99ud
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tyingq
For me, subscriptions wouldn't be great. There aren't many sources where I
appreciate a wide enough range of their stuff that I would want the "buffet"
model of paying for access to everything they have.

As an example, I really like vice.com's reporting and perspectives on Syria,
ISIS, etc. However, I'm not a fan of their reporting on other topics, like gun
violence, environmental issues, etc.

I would be much more excited about micropayments where I pay only for what I
care about. In the same way that I like "on demand movies" over say, a
subscription to HBO.

~~~
jerf
Micropayments are locally good for you, but might have a global effect of
making news providers chase just the things that people will provide the
micropayments for, creating another variant on the "Buzzfeed" problem, just
with a different focus.

Although, to be honest, I'm not sure how to fix that problem. Trying to create
a system that provides news people need instead of news people want is a
fundamentally hard problem when those two things don't overlap.

~~~
commentzorro
For me the solution is a Netflix like. (Newsflicks?) You subscribe to
Newsflicks and can then access all the articles from journalism sites that
partner with Newsflicks.

~~~
mercer
Blendle does this, and is now expanding to Germany. They seem to be doing
pretty well. [http://www.blendle.com](http://www.blendle.com).

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kristineberth
PressReader does this at a much bigger scale than Blendle. It's truly Netflix-
for-newspapers-and-magazines. 5,000+ titles, full versions, current day, all-
you-can-read model. It's paid for either by personal subscriptions
($30USD/month) or sponsored access is provided by businesses (airlines like
Qantas and Virgin Australia, thousands of major hotels around the world,
20,000+ libraries, a partnership with Uber in France for the Cannes Film
Festival, etc.) Users can download full titles onto their own device and save
them for later reading too.

Full disclosure, I work at PressReader. But it surprises me sometimes when
we're not mentioned in these conversations. We do huge business
internationally, have millions of active users, have been profitable for
years, and are growing at an absolutely insane rate. It's a win-win business
model because readers get content (often for free since it's sponsored by a
brand they're a customer of), publishers make money (we pay royalties when
their content is read), and brands have the opportunity to offer something
tangible and personalized to their customers.

~~~
commentzorro
I can only read content for 14 days after publication then it can be accessed?
I have to pay by the publication in addition to pay by the month? No, this
seems like a horrible service for a home consumer. Someone references an
article from WaPo or NYT from six months ago and my expensive subscription
service can't even reach it?!

~~~
kristineberth
You can read up to 90 days of back issues, full-version. If you have a
subscription ($30USD/month) it's all-you-can-read unlimited access to
everything. If you'd like to purchase a single issue instead of subscribing,
you can, but the subscription model gives you full access.

Better yet, visit the PressReader HotSpot Map and you'll see all the places
you can get full access to PressReader for free. You just have to access it
while you're connected to their WiFi:
[http://www.pressreader.com/hotspot/map](http://www.pressreader.com/hotspot/map)

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CM30
I like the idea of subscriptions, and I do think they have more of a chance
than advertising as far as being a sustainable way to make money for ads goes,
but they won't be the future of journalism as a whole.

Why? Because to a certain degree, the majority of standard journalism simply
isn't commercially viable. I mean, look at the kind of articles most news
sites run. Just plain old news, few if any opinions, only valuable because
it's a somewhat quick way of finding out what's going on.

How are subscriptions going to work for that? Why would anyone pay for plain
old news when social media sites and aggregators (like Hacker News and Reddit)
give you the same information for nothing? If you purely want to know what the
latest Apple product is, when a new game will be released, what two
celebrities got married or who won the football game, then why pay for an
article about it? It's already all over the internet for nothing, thanks to
people willing to post about that stuff for free.

This subscription thing only works for fields where news is difficult to
report (say, from a war zone) or where the author's opinion/insight itself is
valuable (read, not entertainment/gaming journalism). Unfortunately, this
makes up a far lower percentage of journalism than some people like to
believe.

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mercer
Edit: while I could remove this comment in 'shame' over posting it before
reading the article (written by the cofounder of, uh, The Correspondent), I'll
just leave it up...

I agree that low-quality journalism will have difficulty applying the
subscription model, but personally I won't mourn their disappearance. I
stopped actively reading most main-stream newspapers a long time ago.

The Correspondent, on the other hand, a Dutch online newspaper, is doing
pretty well with subscriptions. Their approach (and tagline/motto) is to go
'beyond the whims/delusion of the day' by only publishing a few good articles
a day, instead of the deluge of articles, often rewritten Reuters/AP items
giving you piecemeal, context-less updates on different issues.

Their approach is about having a number of correspondents, each in charge of a
theme that the staff considers important, or that the readers have suggested
([https://decorrespondent.nl/correspondenten](https://decorrespondent.nl/correspondenten)
for a list, google translate should give you an impression of the various
themes). Quite often pieces by guest writers are published too, but usually
still under one of these themes.

Quite often they'll publish a series of articles, diving into one topic, or
write an article as a response to reader feedback (one example being the
Operation Easy Chair, which they also published in English and as an eBook:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789987)).

So far they seem to be doing pretty well, which is amazing considering that
it's (almost) entirely in Dutch, and entirely reader-supported. I think
they're working on an English version as well.

One could argue that it only works because their audience mostly consists of
educated readers with a decent income, but I'd argue that 'non-educated'
readers would often be better of with little to no news instead of the crap
they're presented with through the low-quality papers. And if demand for such
news is large enough, people will end up willing to pay for it when it's gone.
Finally, there's acceptable news coverage provided on public broadcast as
well.

This will suck for many journalists, but I wouldn't be surprised if the decent
ones will be happy with whatever alternatives pop up. Most decent journalists
I know are miserable at the papers they work for, for various reasons. The
Wire's last season, while perhaps a bit too slanted against mainstream
newspapers, does a pretty decent job outlining many of the problems.

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iss
I believe that ads are killing journalism. The focus is not on creating good
content, but mainly create content that will be clickable and sharable.
Unfortunately, in our world, there is no direct correlation between good and
sharable content. I'm definitely willing to subscribe to media outlets focused
on informing and providing great content to their readers or do some
micropayments, basically pay for the content I read and care about.

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apple314159
One problem with subscriptions is privacy. One could argue that currently it
is difficult with all the ad tracking but its possible. With subscriptions,
state agencies will have an easier time knowing your preferences just by
following the money.

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rojoca
You can always use a VPN, register with a dummy email account, and pay with a
prepaid credit card if you're concerned about such things. Alternatively,
subscribe to everything so your preferences disappear.

