I think they’re too narrowly focused on subscriptions and I used to work in journalism.
I don’t want buy the whole paper for some arbitrary length of time, with maybe a few exceptions in print that are already hyper focused on my specific interests (New Yorker, NYRB).
They need to have a button that says .99¢ for this article, one click, apple pay, no sign up flow that makes me navigate away, no dark pattern bullshit.
It has to be so close to instant that it operates right in the moment an article catches my interest.
And maybe, if I buy five articles in one month, maybe give me an auto-renew subscription option.
I don’t think this is a hard problem, I think the issue is:
1. Wanting to force a subscription model for revenue predictability, etc.
2. Mimicking of crappy web bad patterns for capturing user juice and retention.
3. Editorial drift that’s chasing social media clicks and compromises the product.
This sounds entirely unappealing to me -- not to say you're wrong, just to say that not everyone agrees and your preferences might not be as widespread as you think they are.
(And its likely someone, somewhere has focus grouped or A/B tested this. It's not a novel idea. But there's a reason it doesn't exist, probably that it results in LESS money for the content producer)
It could obviously live side by side with an actual subscription, and I’m sure this has been gamed out and called too risky in a hundred meetings.
But newspapers need to reconcile that in an era of hypersmall publications (aka blogs, substack, etc.) they are no longer in a market which is about the overall package (the paper) but the individual writer.
The business model does not reflect this reality, tie the transaction to that value, or respect that diversity of authorship is the value of the web. I want to read 20 authors from 20 papers, not 20 from 1. There is less and less value in having “a venue” to subscribe to apart from the support it gives individual authors to do in-depth work.
I never understood how something like individual journalists, writers, reviews, etc on Substack or on their own blogs haven't formed something like a journalist cooperative.
It's owned and operated by the journalists themselves, and they all maintain their independent and individual reporting. But now with the added support of 20-30 other journalists to work together for the really big stories.
And it's easy enough to have the overarching cooperative submit for grants, donations, or other revenue-generating activities to support the journalism.
I would LOVE to have the big/fancy/major newspapers to have the option of paying $0.50 or $1 for articles. I don't read papers often, but once in a while, if something major is happening, I would love to read a 2-3-4 page analysis, with graphs, maps, etc. in a 'serious' newspaper. And than happens once per quarter.
No business survives by offering the bare minimum service for the lowest price. The $5/yr you might spend on stories is not worth them making their subscriptions be less valuable. Absent sustained recurring revenue and a trusted relationship with readers, they'd basically be doing click bait all over again.
The hardest (technical) problem for that flow is the fixed cost of transactions making such small payments unappealing. To even make such a flow appealing, we need to first find a way to not lose 15% (or more) of a $1 transaction to payment processing.
It should be $1 for limited-term access to the whole site, not one article.
Not just journalism but all subscription media should have non-subscription options. All the streaming video or music services should allow 1 day access for $1 or 1 week for $5. It costs them nothing to do so and I don’t think it will erode their monthly subscribers since it’s going to be cheaper for a month.
I can't tell if an article is worth reading until after I've read it, or a decent chunk of it. So I wouldn't pay for articles on this basis. I do pay for movies like this, but in that case I've already read reviews, been told by a friend that it's good, or seen it win awards (and all that information is free).
I don’t want buy the whole paper for some arbitrary length of time, with maybe a few exceptions in print that are already hyper focused on my specific interests (New Yorker, NYRB).
They need to have a button that says .99¢ for this article, one click, apple pay, no sign up flow that makes me navigate away, no dark pattern bullshit.
It has to be so close to instant that it operates right in the moment an article catches my interest.
And maybe, if I buy five articles in one month, maybe give me an auto-renew subscription option.
I don’t think this is a hard problem, I think the issue is:
1. Wanting to force a subscription model for revenue predictability, etc. 2. Mimicking of crappy web bad patterns for capturing user juice and retention. 3. Editorial drift that’s chasing social media clicks and compromises the product.