Hilariously enough one company has a business model that is working: BuzzFeed.
They have been using the money raised from their clickbait business to operate BuzzFeed News. Which actually is a very distinct unit containing highly respected, award winning journalists who work on old school, long form journalism.
and in exchange they have turned their name to trash. I know they do are doing some quality work and I still feel a bit dirty clicking on an article from buzzfeed.
I don't mind kicking them when they're down, news org editors are some of the most vile scum of the earth. They have no shame about peddling garbage.
Unless they make a sincere effort to restore trust by reporting the news instead of trying to shape society by controlling the narrative then I will happily dig their grave. At this point there is no news org I rank higher than Reddit comments -- it's all a stream of piss coming from partisan hacks.
As for business model suggestions, my only suggestion is cut the crap. They can either subject themselves to the indignity of peddling garbage to make money thereby destroying their credibility or they can procure a staff of well-read and well-written folks that have a history of neutrality.
Partnering with FB is a one-way trip to the former while the latter is a logical impossibility, news orgs inevitably stoop to partisan nonsense. Either report the news and don't get scared about alienating your ad sponsors/viewers or you peddle garbage to make money.
I used to be a news editor. I guess I should consider myself vile scum as well?
The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle:
10 Revenue declines.
20 Cost reductions are needed. First, you trim operational expenses, but eventually, you need to reduce head count.
30 With fewer reporters and editors available, you either overwork the remaining staff, leading to burnout, increased turnaround, and a reduction in quality, or you reduce coverage.
40 Either way, subscribers notice an inferior product. They're getting less than what they used to get, either in terms of quality or breadth of coverage (and likely both).
50 Subscribers cancel their subscription.
60 GOTO 10
So now we arrive at a catch 22. The product is not going to improve in quality unless a lot of people are willing to pay for it, and a lot of people (such as yourself) aren't going to be willing to pay for it unless the quality markedly improves.
I wonder if it might be possible for newspapers to get around this problem by doing a Kickstarter-like conditional pledging campaign. Basically, you have people commit to buying a subscription, but only if a high enough threshold of other people also commit. Then it becomes a win-win. If the campaign reaches its threshold, then everyone involved can feel pretty confident that it generates enough revenue to bump up the quality (assuming the newspaper is actually committed to doing that). And if it fails to reach the threshold, then you're not out any money for an inferior product.
The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle
IIRC, It's more like 4-5 decades, and while the cycle is approximately correct for the positive feedback loop now running, it didn't, as I recall, actually start with declining revenues, it started with a wave of newspaper mergers (and acquisition of newspapers by non-newspaper firms) and attempts to increase profits after those mergers by reducing costs, which got you to the step you label "20", and the cycle took off from there.
I have a difficult time envisioning what sort of journalism you expect. Is investigative reporting okay? Are opinion pieces off limits? Are government sources acceptable, or should they be excluded? What about business owners speaking on matters about which they're likely to have conflicts of interest?
People like this are just looking for an excuse to ignore all of the mainstream media so that they can plot their own path. Nothing respected organisations can do would change their mind. Unfortunately this path is how we ended up with PizzaGate.
Comments
I can guarantee you that every single editor in the country would like to have well-paid staff who have the time to do their job well.
And if you can come up with a business model to make it happen, well then I am willing to dub you the savior of the news industry.
But absent any suggestions about how news organizations can actually accomplish this, your comment is basically just kicking them while they're down.
Hilariously enough one company has a business model that is working: BuzzFeed.
They have been using the money raised from their clickbait business to operate BuzzFeed News. Which actually is a very distinct unit containing highly respected, award winning journalists who work on old school, long form journalism.
Example: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/super-court
and in exchange they have turned their name to trash. I know they do are doing some quality work and I still feel a bit dirty clicking on an article from buzzfeed.
I don't mind kicking them when they're down, news org editors are some of the most vile scum of the earth. They have no shame about peddling garbage.
Unless they make a sincere effort to restore trust by reporting the news instead of trying to shape society by controlling the narrative then I will happily dig their grave. At this point there is no news org I rank higher than Reddit comments -- it's all a stream of piss coming from partisan hacks.
As for business model suggestions, my only suggestion is cut the crap. They can either subject themselves to the indignity of peddling garbage to make money thereby destroying their credibility or they can procure a staff of well-read and well-written folks that have a history of neutrality.
Partnering with FB is a one-way trip to the former while the latter is a logical impossibility, news orgs inevitably stoop to partisan nonsense. Either report the news and don't get scared about alienating your ad sponsors/viewers or you peddle garbage to make money.
I used to be a news editor. I guess I should consider myself vile scum as well?
The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle:
10 Revenue declines.
20 Cost reductions are needed. First, you trim operational expenses, but eventually, you need to reduce head count.
30 With fewer reporters and editors available, you either overwork the remaining staff, leading to burnout, increased turnaround, and a reduction in quality, or you reduce coverage.
40 Either way, subscribers notice an inferior product. They're getting less than what they used to get, either in terms of quality or breadth of coverage (and likely both).
50 Subscribers cancel their subscription.
60 GOTO 10
So now we arrive at a catch 22. The product is not going to improve in quality unless a lot of people are willing to pay for it, and a lot of people (such as yourself) aren't going to be willing to pay for it unless the quality markedly improves.
I wonder if it might be possible for newspapers to get around this problem by doing a Kickstarter-like conditional pledging campaign. Basically, you have people commit to buying a subscription, but only if a high enough threshold of other people also commit. Then it becomes a win-win. If the campaign reaches its threshold, then everyone involved can feel pretty confident that it generates enough revenue to bump up the quality (assuming the newspaper is actually committed to doing that). And if it fails to reach the threshold, then you're not out any money for an inferior product.
IIRC, It's more like 4-5 decades, and while the cycle is approximately correct for the positive feedback loop now running, it didn't, as I recall, actually start with declining revenues, it started with a wave of newspaper mergers (and acquisition of newspapers by non-newspaper firms) and attempts to increase profits after those mergers by reducing costs, which got you to the step you label "20", and the cycle took off from there.
I have a difficult time envisioning what sort of journalism you expect. Is investigative reporting okay? Are opinion pieces off limits? Are government sources acceptable, or should they be excluded? What about business owners speaking on matters about which they're likely to have conflicts of interest?
Don't bother. It's pure confirmation bias.
People like this are just looking for an excuse to ignore all of the mainstream media so that they can plot their own path. Nothing respected organisations can do would change their mind. Unfortunately this path is how we ended up with PizzaGate.