
The Atlantic to Install Paywall - danso
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-atlantic-to-install-paywall-joining-wave-of-publishers-diversifying-revenue-1513594800
======
pm90
> A spokesperson for the Atlantic said the magazine will launch with annual
> pricing equivalent to “one fairly nice cup of coffee per month.

If every online property asks me to do this, I would be buying wayy too much
coffee and losing too much cash.

That being said, it is a difficult problem and I'm not sure what the answer
is. I pay for my NYT and WaPo subscription, but probably can't (or won't) be
paying for Atlantic.

I really really like Vox media though, but they don't seem to have a
subscription based option. Also: Politico.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I say pretty much the same thing when charities try to get me to sign up for a
monthly payment.

If I gave money to every charity that asked for it, I wouldn't have any money
left myself.

Maybe what we need is a sort of central payment system for news media. Sort of
like Spotify for news, except that the outlets keep their own sites and you
have a single sign on for all the sites. Your monthly payment would be
distributed according to how many articles you read on each site (or some
other, more fair metric to reward high quality articles, maybe time spent?).

~~~
cbcoutinho
There's already an app that I know of that does that - or at least close
enough. Blendle is an app where you pay per article you read, paid through
your in-app account. My uncle uses it to selectively read articles from some
large publications.

I think one downside is that those publications don't let you sign in on their
systems, so you have to rely on the availability of the articles through a
third-party. I agree that it would be great to have publications allow you to
sign in through a third party system instead of their own. Maybe we can hope
for one in the future?

~~~
geraltofrivia
Also, while I'm sure it's there for practical reasons, the per article price
makes me very uncomfortable. There's this split second decision that I make as
open an article - is it worth my time? To ask "if it's worth my money?" before
every read seems less than ideal. For instance if my music service asked me a
penny for every song I play, I'd probably end up listening to a lot less songs
than I do.

~~~
stiller
Blendle offers instant refunds for this reason.

------
muzani
I would really be happy if there was a journalism company that I could pay for
quality articles.

Unfortunately, most articles are low quality. Clickbait journalism is like
this - a lot of people produce things that people would be willing to pay to
_not_ read.

The quality articles are also extremely rare; most media sites are one hit
wonders, creating only one or two quality things. So a subscription would not
be helpful either.

I think a better way to monetize would be to write a book or something,
collecting the best of the best, or digging deeper into an idea that went
viral. Tim Ferriss and Cal Newport comes to mind.

~~~
QasimK
You’re looking for things like blendle.com. I don’t use this particular
service because they don’t allow “+” in email addresses.

~~~
danso
LOL that's the reason that I gave up trying to subscribe to the WSJ digital
edition, even after as much Imliked heir Theranos investigation.

------
jmfayard
I see paywalls as win-win deal.

The abundance cliché tells us that more news outlets reaching more readers is
always a good thing.

In reality though for the news producers, what's the point of reaching many
millions if you become a slave of advertisements and of the competition for
people's attention?

And from our perspective as readers, we should drop the abundance mentality
and understands our news consumption much like we understand our food
consumption. There is the equivalent to consuming too much food and to
consuming unhealthy food. Consuming more don't make us more informed. As
Steven Pinker says, even when it's honest and good, "News is a misleading way
to understand the world". It's all about dramatic events that just happened
and slow but powerful and meaningful evolutions naturally take the backseat.
But they do make us meaner, angrier, more pessimistic.

I prefer to choose to consume less news, but to really enjoy the ones that I
do consume. And "I am ready to pay for it?" is a very good assesment of wether
that's the case.

[https://www.vox.com/2016/8/16/12486586/2016-worst-year-
ever-...](https://www.vox.com/2016/8/16/12486586/2016-worst-year-ever-
violence-trump-terrorism)

~~~
Fnoord
Agreed, paywalls are a win-win because it has the potential to remove the
chains of clickbait and pulp. Except that "a cup of coffee" is a US-centric
term which doesn't apply everywhere in the world. Not everyone in the world
(or even the US) can afford to spend those few USD a month on a news outlet.
And if they, they can only afford to buy so many cups of coffee. So a lot of
people who can't afford won't resort to it. Except, perhaps, in their native
languages.

(Comment written on the cost-free, advertisement-free website Hacker News.)

------
rusk
I found I was reading a few Atlantic articles here and there so I thought sure
why not support journalism and sign up for subscription. Signed up for print
and digital.

The whole experience was awful.

After three months I never received a single print copy. The only digital
edition I could access under android was the one that was freely available
anyway. I couldn't access the premium content. For that I had to go and
download the PDF which is quite suboptimal. The IOS app wasn't great either.

(EDIT: I should say that I was back and forth with their "support" numerous
times about my issues before I took the decision to cancel)

In the end I cancelled, but it took a few goes to get in touch with anybody
about it... I figured out how to do the cancellation myself on their "site"
but even then had to go through some third party fulfilment agency to get the
full refund. Promised me a cheque. Cheque never arrived and eventually I
kicked up a stink and they just refunded to my credit card.

Good luck to them I suppose. They do some great long reads and those writers
have to be paid. Hopefully this paywall signals transition to a more solid
commercial framework ... totally put me off them though.

------
jaggederest
Maybe now they'll stop gaming the system on sites like Reddit and HN. They
were banned from reddit for shady practices for a while, and went so far as to
switch to different domains to get around it.

------
craftyguy
> “More than a million people come to our site 10 times or more every month,”
> Mr. Cohn said. “What we’re doing now is we’re saying to that group: ‘Help us
> continue to expand our journalism.’”

No, what they're saying is: $-)

~~~
dx034
It's hard to expand journalism without hiring journalists.

------
egeozcan
Where is the Spotify for online newspapers already?

~~~
rusk
Well I think that both Apple and Google have tried to do this with their
respective newstand apps but I'm not sure how successful this has been.

Also revenue I guess, for such a service is probably a good bit less than
getting your readers to pay soley for access to your publication.

------
Havoc
It’s funny how initially everyone thought those media barons pushing their
sites behind paywalls were seen as crazy. They seem to have achieved their
vision though - if everything is behind one then it no longer looks abnormal.

------
Jaruzel
What we need is a central payment body that we can 'subscribe' to and then
select the websites with paywalls we want access to.

Then its a) easy to manage your budget as it's one payment per
month/six/yearly, and b) reduces reader friction, as a SAML/oAuth type logon
can be performed when you click through the paywall notice on your selected
news sites.

All that needs to happen is for someone to stand up and be the payment body,
and for a critical mass of news sites to sign up.

Doesn't seem that hard really.

~~~
stiller
Blendle provides something close to what you describe: [https://pay-
docs.blendle.io/](https://pay-docs.blendle.io/) So it's mostly a matter of
these publication signing up.

------
gexla
Thank you. I have already been getting some pretty good practice in ignoring
any of the current paywall sites. It's a great way to cut down on distraction.
If the best content sites do this, then I can ignore the rest as well.

I feel they should all get paid and I would rather that model rather than ads.
My comment sounds negative, but I think it's a good move. I have switched to
newsletters which give headlines and summaries.

------
junkscience2017
Despite what these publications tell you, the oversupply of people wanting to
write things on the internet means you actually do not need to pay for
"quality" journalism.

For every grizzled vet that throws in the towel, frustrated with adblocking
freeloaders...two young idealists take their place.

Anyone can publish a blog. Mastheads don't have a reason to exist anymore. My
advice to a young writer is to build your own brand and forget about print
operations trying vainly to stay relevant but have no reason to exist anymore.

On any given day, on any given topic, I can usually look around for a few
minutes in any Reddit thread and find something genuine, well written, and
useful that is equal to or superior to "quality" journalism that apparently
won't survive without my money

~~~
godzillabrennus
Investigative journalism takes money.

Freelance bloggers can’t be expected to put in the time to do the job while
they pay for their hobby writing.

~~~
bhhaskin
When was the last time you saw real investigative journalism? These days it's
a race to get what ever click-bait headlines you can get from 'unamed sources'
(or my favorite 'sources close to X') up and out the door. Gotta get those
sweet sweet ad views. Journalistic integrity is long dead and what's left are
those Freelance bloggers; except they no longer write for blogs, but major
entertainment outlets.

~~~
ralfd
Take this story about the "banned words at the CDC" which double checked a
story by the Washington Post:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/health/cdc-trump-
banned-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/health/cdc-trump-banned-
words.html)

The NYT contacted the agency spokesman and several present and former federal
officials. They contacted the agency spokeswoman of the FDA. They quote a
former Surgeon General and an outsider expert.

> Sheila Kaplan reported from Washington, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New
> York. Pam Belluck contributed reporting from New York.

Three people wrote the article and pooled their contacts or input. It was
likely edited to make it short and concise. How many blog posts care to do
that instead of rehashing or just spinning opinion?

~~~
simula67
I don't think calling people up and asking them to make a statement is beyond
the reach of a blogger. Investigative journalism does take a lot of effort and
it needs to be encouraged, however vast majority of journalism produced is not
investigative and could be made more efficient and democratic

