High level, there are basically four paths to getting revenue in journalism:
- ads
- subscribers
- donations from small patrons
- donations from large patrons
These cover a lot of different business models.
If you want to make money at journalism (or just keep the lights on), focusing on ads when they've been a declining source of revenue for decades is kind of crazy. And that's not due to ad blocking.
Not every problem is technical. Modern journalism is still just a participant in capitalism.
This is a business model problem, and figuring out how to build a healthy company and news organization with a reliable stream of revenues to allow long-term planning. Add in the pressure that most journalism is now private sector with growth expectations, such that the BBC and NPR are outliers.
They should have invented Craigslist. No newspaper did this because they couldn't see the value of free classifieds driving traffic for select paid listings.
That's easy. I don't. I have no problem parasitically eating them for long-tail information while paying for my primary sources.
uBlock Origin and rampant infotheft it is. And that's okay, I don't really care if they live or die. Just like they don't really care if I live or die.
The problem is the free services can't exist without the originators. The originators can't exist without revenue. If the journalists who are actually writing the pieces as opposed to copying them don't get paid the whole thing falls apart.
How do they expect me to make money? I hate to be snarky, as I do actually value journalism and think it represents an important part of a free society. However, why is it my responsibility to participate in their business model? Can we fund them with taxes (in a non-dystopian way that keeps political interference out of the equation)? After all, they don't spend time thinking about my business model.
Personally I think big tech aggregators like Google and Facebook should be taxed to support journalism. That could either be a fee when someone clicks on a link or a flat amount per year that everyone gets to spend on journalism implemented as a tax refund.
These companies have sucked all of the value out of journalism. Normally I'd be fine with that, but the tragedy of the commons on an entire vital industry seems to large to ignore here.
So what, Google and Facebook are now incentivized to ban those links from their platform, further increasing the censorship rampant on their platforms?
Comments
How do you expect The Independent and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to make money?
High level, there are basically four paths to getting revenue in journalism:
- ads
- subscribers
- donations from small patrons
- donations from large patrons
These cover a lot of different business models.
If you want to make money at journalism (or just keep the lights on), focusing on ads when they've been a declining source of revenue for decades is kind of crazy. And that's not due to ad blocking.
It's worth mentioning that ads can also be delivered without tracking and oodles of Javascript. Sell ad placements that are images, even GIFs.
People were blocking ads long before those were reasons.
The first ad blockers existed for popups and because ad networks were being used as a malware injection point.
Only extremists had an issue with the standard JPG banner ad at the top of every page.
TIL I'm an extremist.
Welcome to the club.
Though those little rectangle GIFs were mint back in the day
There is a 5th way. Sponsored content. Basically where people pay to have an article written about a particular topic or product.
What led you to that conclusion? (You may be right. I don't know.)
I'd pay 25 cents an article, if they can get together with a few other content creators and decide on a shared micro-transaction system.
I have been waiting for this for a decade. Now that I’m a software developer I can only imagine what the difficulties of implementing this would be.
Not every problem is technical. Modern journalism is still just a participant in capitalism.
This is a business model problem, and figuring out how to build a healthy company and news organization with a reliable stream of revenues to allow long-term planning. Add in the pressure that most journalism is now private sector with growth expectations, such that the BBC and NPR are outliers.
Isn't that the purpose of the BAT used in the Brave browser?
Yeah, and I hope it works out. But -- last I checked -- I can't use pay pal to add BAT, and I don't think it's a stable coin...
They should have invented Craigslist. No newspaper did this because they couldn't see the value of free classifieds driving traffic for select paid listings.
That's easy. I don't. I have no problem parasitically eating them for long-tail information while paying for my primary sources.
uBlock Origin and rampant infotheft it is. And that's okay, I don't really care if they live or die. Just like they don't really care if I live or die.
By providing better journalism than what I can get for free. That starts with the user experience, which is currently quite poor.
No one is willing to pay for local journalism when every site will copy your story as soon as it breaks.
Great, that puts it on-par with the status quo.
The problem is the free services can't exist without the originators. The originators can't exist without revenue. If the journalists who are actually writing the pieces as opposed to copying them don't get paid the whole thing falls apart.
That's when the current originators fall and newer, more intelligent ones take their place.
No. It's when clickbait and fake news crafted for engagement over truth takes their place.
How do they expect me to make money? I hate to be snarky, as I do actually value journalism and think it represents an important part of a free society. However, why is it my responsibility to participate in their business model? Can we fund them with taxes (in a non-dystopian way that keeps political interference out of the equation)? After all, they don't spend time thinking about my business model.
It’s not your responsibility, you can simply not visit their site if you don’t wish to participate.
How can this possibly work?
Agreed, this is the best answer. If I don't agree with a sites choice in terms of background scripts/privacy/funding method, I just stop visiting it.
Personally I think big tech aggregators like Google and Facebook should be taxed to support journalism. That could either be a fee when someone clicks on a link or a flat amount per year that everyone gets to spend on journalism implemented as a tax refund.
These companies have sucked all of the value out of journalism. Normally I'd be fine with that, but the tragedy of the commons on an entire vital industry seems to large to ignore here.
So what, Google and Facebook are now incentivized to ban those links from their platform, further increasing the censorship rampant on their platforms?