

Ask HN: How to bring back the subscription business model for news? - jballanc

So, in a different story that hit the front page today I had a mini-rant (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473489). That mini-rant (plus the 3 hours noprocrast time), got me thinking...<p>It seems to me that there has been a shift in news reporting recently, away from intensive, in-depth reporting toward quick-hit, sensationalism. Surely, some of both has always existed (i.e. "Dewey Beats Truman"), but I do think there has been a subtle, yet perceptible shift. Now, I think I understand why.<p>Time was that you subscribed to a newspaper. The number of subscribers the newspaper had was used to determine the cost of advertising, and so a newspaper was rewarded for a constant high-level of reporting which would attract a large number of readers. Then came TV news and Nielsen ratings. Nielsen was closer to being instant gratification for advertisers than subscriber-base numbers, but it was still a statistical average. Appeal to a large range of average people over a long enough period of time was still the surest way to maintain consistently high ratings.<p>Now we have the ultimate in advertiser instant gratification: click-through rate! And sensationalists have the perfect platforms: Digg, Reddit, and (dare I say it?) HN! No longer is there a need to appeal to an average group over an average time-span. Sensationalism rules the day. Gone are the days of always turning to the same source for news. Gone, even, are the days of channel surfing.<p>Thus, I feel the need to make subscriber-based business models viable again, if for no other reason that to give news organizations the incentive to do deep, far reaching reporting once again. The problem is, a lot of the advantages that the subscriber model had are gone. For example, subscribing to a news paper meant that it was delivered each day, saving you a trip to the news stand. Today, though, subscriptions and one-offs are equally easy to obtain. Other incentives like regular delivery of coupons or comic strips are also non-issues in an internet world.<p>Certainly, RSS has gone some of the way toward reviving the subscription model, but I'm thus far disappointed with it's ability to penetrate the market. I find RSS adoption rates to be hugely polarized, with nearly all of my geekier friends subscribing to multiple feeds, and nearly none of my less technology literate friends even aware of what RSS is!<p>I suppose there is also a question of whether the subscription model even <i>is</i> better. I'm sure the advertisers might have a different opinion that I do. Anyway, I'm at a loss...The one idea I came up with is that maybe aggregation sites like HN should start rewarding the content producers the same way they reward the consumers. That is, maybe individual sites should have Karma too, so that any one submission is more likely to find its way to the front page.<p>Sorry that got so long...I feel better now...<p>&#60;/rant&#62;<p>Cheers,<p>Josh
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jacquesm
I must have missed the advertising on HN somehow that caused you to include
the site in that list up there.

RSS is going to be mostly machine to machine, much to my regret because I was
an angel investor in a startup that was focusing on RSS 'smarts'. Quite
possibly their tech can be adopted to the new world order, I doubt it will
ever see very large adoption by end users.

So, as I said in some other thread here somewhere, the one who manages to
'crack' the business case for an online website that can send out real
reporters to do real reporting and that is not too beholden to advertisers
will make it big.

They'll do to news what google has done for search, and one day they might buy
up a network or two for old times sake.

But right now I don't think anybody even has an inkling of how to go about
that. In Europe newspapers are merging in order to be able to survive, that
can only go on so long.

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vaksel
You can't.

In this day and age people are too used to free, especially for information.
"Why should I pay you $$$ if I can get more or less the same thing for free
from Google search"

And RSS is just as "sensationalist" since blogs etc use that to drive traffic
to their actual pages

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pclark
weird, you literally explained my startup.

I dont want to give too much away too much, but here are too examples of stuff
we hope to make possible:

* link your Dopplr account, so you get news based on _where you're going_ a few days before your trip

* fun stuff, comics and games will be brought up to the web era. xkcd and various other syndicated comics will be displayed (assuming they match your interests)

What do you think?

