NY Times Apparently Planning To Commit Suicide Online With Paywall
from the so-long,-farewell dept
There have been rumors for a while that, despite the NY Times massive failure with its last attempt at a paywall -- which drove away users in bunches, pissed off NY Times writers and did little to help the bottom line -- the NY Times might consider going back down that cursed road. And now reports are leaking out that the braintrust at the NYT has made a decision and it's to kill off whatever value the NY Times' online presence may have had by putting up a paywall designed to piss off users and take itself out of the online conversation.Apparently, it considered three options for getting users to pay more for online content -- and then chose the worst of the three. Among the rejected ideas were the one that we thought sounded quite promising of creating a CwF+RtB-style membership club, that would give people all sorts of benefits for paying, without taking away the free content. The newspaper apparently also rejected a WSJ-style paywall that is pretty porous, with lots of content for free, and easy ways in if necessary, but some stuff gets blocked out. I don't think that's a very good solution long-term, but it surely beats the solution that the NY Times appears to have gone with: a Financial Times-style "metered" system, whereby you can visit a few times per month and are then locked out. I try not to link to the Financial Times because of this particular system. It means when I link to them a large number of my readers can't read the story, and that is no good for anyone. Why am I going to send people to a story they can't read? Putting up such a system takes the NY Times out of the conversation online and makes sure that people won't link to them, won't share the stories and won't discuss them.
Will some people sign up and pay? Yes, absolutely. In fact, I'm sure that there will be stories early on about just how many people subscribed. But as we saw with TimesSelect, that initial number plateaued quickly, and getting the next generation of readers to sign up? Yeah... good luck. Putting this system in place is effectively the NY Times saying that it only plans to be the paper of record for an older generation, and plans to give up the next generation.
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Failed to Bailed
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Re: Failed to Bailed
"No sir, it's release the safety then pull the trigger."
"Wax? It would be very difficult to kill yourself with wax; unless you drown in it or choke on it..."
"Paywall? Yes, that should do the trick. Have a nice death sir."
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Sorry
Time to die NYT. May your corps stand as a warning to all who refuse to adapt.
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Re: Sorry
If readers are not willing to pay for value content, eventually that content will disappear. Advertising subsidies are disintermediated by Google and others, so there old revenue model of premier newspapers is being destroyed.
Eventually only blogs may remain and a few news services, all reporting the same.
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Re: Re: Sorry
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Re: Re: Sorry
Now that they have some serious competition from blogs/news sites (and there are a lot of good news sites) they will die if they can't adapt to the competition doing a better job.
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Re: Re: Re: Sorry
dying (dieing)
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Re: Re: Re: Sorry
dying (dieing)
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Re: Re: Sorry
It doesn't matter if they fail because they do not add any value to society. Your description of the future, "a few news services, all reporting the same" is the reality right now.
And I'm not going to pay for that something of so little value.
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Re: Re: Sorry
You mean like how we were unwilling to pay for TV broadcasts when they emerged in the 1950s, and now TV content has all disappeared?
Or do you mean, instead, how society didn't pay for radio broadcasts when they emerged, so now they're all gone? Or how they were killed by the video star?
RE Google: tell me how pointing more readers at your site diminishes your ad revenue again. I missed that point.
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Re: Re: Sorry
their (there)
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Re: Sorry
I have never nor will ever pay to read a website, I don't think I'm alone in that statement.
Time to die NYT. May your corps stand as a warning to all who refuse to adapt.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
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Re: Re: Sorry
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Re: Re: Sorry
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Re: Sorry
I will not pay to read a website at first, and I will never pay to read a website when I have to pay. Why should I? It shows a distrust and disrespect for me, so why should I trust and respect it?
As Ryan mentions in his comment above, the problem with the news industry is that the quality of reporting has become so bad as to be worthless. The editorial blogs I read offer much higher quality and intelligent opinion, often in the comment section, than corporate news sources and the news reporting blogs I read offer much higher quality reporting. The worst ones offer reporting of equally bad quality because they just repeat the same syndicated stories that you get from the corporate news.
If the traditional news sources offered something of value, I wouldn't mind paying for it at all. But they don't.
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Re: Sorry
corpse (corps)
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Paying Devices
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Does your boss at the office not pay you? If you're a mechanic and someone brings in their car, do you work for free? etc etc
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Re: "I just don't understand
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Re: Re: "I just don't understand
Dude, are you really posting that rhetorical question after reading one of Mike's 20,000 posts in 12 years, all of which are available right now, free of charge?
This is like engaging in the "If a tree falls in a forest" quandary in the Brazilian rainforest as a crew of 30 bulldozers knocks down trees all around you.
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Re: Re: Re: "I just don't understand
40,000 posts. Well, just a bit under. But almost there...
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Re: "I just don't understand"
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Re: Anon.
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Re:
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Re: Why not pay?
Most news sources provide content free to the user with advertisements. Unless the NYT continually has something unique THAT PEOPLE WANT, it won't work. Talk shows can charge for their downloads, because they are unique. How can NYT expect people to pay for their version of the Obamacare bill, when other sources have beat all angles to death.
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Re: Why not pay?
The content was essentially free, it was there to draw an audience for the ads.
The price of a newspaper never approached the costs of production, it was simply to offset distribution costs.
These days, distribution costs are as close to zero as you can get.
If you don't want to write that article, someone else will.
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Re:
No one ever says "I need the news..." they say "I want the news...".
See the difference?
Because someone wants something doesn't mean they'll pay for it. Sure they won't get it, but where does that leave you the newspaper?
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Re:
And those who read the free newspapers given out in London (and presumably other cities?)
And people who watch freeview TV (in the UK - not sure on US terminology)
And people who listen to the radio
And anyone who has ever asked a friend what the score from last night was
etc etc
I would comment that the point is you do still make money for your product it's just that you don't charge the end user and instead make money elsewhere but I'm guessing since you're on here you're aware of that argument and aren't interested in that.
Plus if I'm a mechanic and someone brings in their car I probably will work for free for the first half an hour to tell them what's wrong and advertise what I can do to help if they're willing to pay for a scarce resource - my time.
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Re:
Its call Free Market Economics, look it up...
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Re:
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Re:
Sorry to disappoint you, but "you" (or the NYT author etc.) don't "make" the news. You just report it. The facts that you report don't exist simply because you report them. They exist independently of your reporting. That is why people don't want to pay for news. They pay for the delivery of news. Before the Internet, you had to rely on the papers, which, material as they were, needed to be paid for and their delivery needed to be paid for. Now, with the Internet, the production and delivery issues disappeared entirely. What's left is the need for someone to write up the stories. The trick is that there is always someone willing to write up the story for free. Also, there is also always someone able and willing to centralize and present the story that have been written (not necessary the same person/entity). The result is that, no matter what (online) papers do, the old business model is dead... not just dieing but altogether dead. The only problem is that it's not buried yet. Nevertheless, people has started to notice that the body started to stink some time ago...
Why you see only "Internet types" advocating free/open stuff? Because they understand what I've just said. Everybody will get it eventually, but we're not there yet.
Don't confuse physical goods with virtual goods. Some people, like, for example, you, seem to think that the lack of physicality of the virtual goods doesn't differentiate them from physical goods. But that's not true. I won't start reiterating through all the arguments why that's a fallacy but I invite you to look up some of Mike's old articles on this topic. They should be very enlightening.
"Does your boss at the office not pay you? If you're a mechanic and someone brings in their car, do you work for free? etc etc"
This is another fallacy. Your boss or your garage client aren't paying you for a virtual good (like in the case of the NYT articles). They pay you for a service. If they don't pay, they don't get the service. That's different from a virtual good. You can look at it in this way: a service is something done on demand and it has a high probability that is customized to each customer at least a little. On the other hand, a virtual good is something that has been produced already and it is provided to everyone as is. That being said, in the case of a service, the service provider does at least some work for every served client. On the other hand, the virtual good provider works only once and then expects to be paid by every client. This is why you won't find any service providers equating a lost sale to a complete loss, like the virtual goods providers do. If a service provider loses a sale, he actually loses just the profit (which, let's say, just as an example, was 20% of the sale price). On the other hand, when a virtual good provider loses a sale, he also loses just the profit... only that in this case, the profit is 100% of the sale price. So, you see, in the end is only a matter of some people wanting to suck everybody else dry and to make fabulous profits by taking advantage of some peoples' lack of understanding of how these things work.
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Re: the best things in life
We may pay to support our children, but we don't pay for them.
Rocks and trees and flowers actually existed long before your local garden center started selling them. No one has paid for the bunnies and squirrels and chipmunks in my neighborhood, but they certainly exist. And I certainly appreciate them.
If you're talking about human generated creations, well, years ago the only way people could have a hand stitched quilt was if they made it themselves or received it as a gift. Quilts were a useful thing created out of scraps. You certainly couldn't buy them in a store. Because of the great amount of work required in creating a quilt, quilters would gather together to create quilts for community members who needed them, and socialized in the process. It was a community effort.
Today, non-quilters pay hundreds of dollars for quilts. In some circles quilting is considered an art. Many of the most satisfying quilt patterns have existed for hundreds of years, and they are shared and improved on. You might evn say "remixed". Machine made knock offs exist but the quality just isn't the same. Still, I have yet to see quilters bring copyright infringement suits against anyone.
The open source movement has more in common with quilting community tradition than anything else I can think of.
The thing that makes it difficult to understand is that although art is work, it is not the same as labour.
Sorry I don't have time right now to explain it any better... I have to do some work for pay. Maybe I'll write a blog post explaining it sometime... for free... i don't even allow ads on my blog :)
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Re: Re: the best things in life
My grandmother quilts. This, in my opinion, is spot on.
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Re: Re: the best things in life
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Re:
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Re:
We are going to completely ignore all the free stuff for the last X thousands years used for many different purposes.
jackass.
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Re:
Newspapers have failed to maintain ownership of the media and the distribution of their original content.
Much like the telegraph companies, radio broadcasters and network television broadcasters ignored the technologies that diminished or replaced them, newspapers have failed to own the networks and internet service providers that distributes their content and that control their customers' access to them.
Dragging the tired, old monthly subscription model into the digital age unchanged won't work.
Newspapers need to study how radio and network television have responded to the changes in their industries.
Newspapers could certainly learn and build on the business model developed between content providers, channel owners and cable networks.
Customers simply are not going to pay twice for internet access and for content, especially when much of the same content is available at no additional charge on other sites.
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??
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Re: ??
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Re: Re: ??
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SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
An approach to preserve the profitability of quality media companies.
Subscription Federation is a way for quality online media companies to collect the subscription fees that are necessary to ensure their robust survival.
The approach requires all of the quality media companies to form a subscription federation. A subscription federation allows the subscriber to access all of the online content of all of the members of the federation for one small monthly fee.
The quality media companies are those that produce quality journalism, primarily print. This would include companies like The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and most other big city dailies. Secondary publications including quality magazines and second tier news sites would also be welcome. These would include sites like Science Magazine, National Geographic, the Blackpool Gazette and so forth. Other forms of media may also be welcome to join but the primary thrust of this proposal is the preservation of quality journalism.
Each subscriber's fee would be broken up to each online site based upon how much time each subscriber spent at each site.
The amount that each site would gain from each subscriber would be small. However, because the target market for this proposal is the entire English Speaking World, the amount of subscribers should be large.
Thirty million people paying seven dollars a month should be able to offset substantial newsroom overhead.
This Corporate Statesmen proposal was contributed by
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
Good luck with that.
Plus you'd need some sort of an organisation to collect the payments (lets call them "royalties") and distribute it to the newspapers and journalists (lets call them "artists").
Anyone know where we can find a good organisation like that?
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Re: Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
Anyone know where we can find a good organisation like that?
A good one? No.
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
And thus why it is doomed to failure.
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
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Re: SUBSCRIPTION FEDERATION - the only wat to get people to pay
Ever heard of the concept of Anti-Trust laws?
Thought not
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Publishing business models
To understand that to survive a free free edition is necessary but people would be prepared to pay for particular individual articles at a reasonable low rate. Exactly what has happened with music. People are prepared to pay a small amount for a single song, but NOT buy the whole album with 75% of music they do not want.
Here is the free news:
1
2
3
Here is the indepth evaluation, opinion and analysis - pay per item.
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Seems Mike doesn't believe in allowing failures to fail. It's not that they have an implicit political tie into the government which gives them a line of credit and earns them the title "too big to fail"
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Re:
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Bye Bye NYT
It's too bad, but of course part of it is that these are media outlets I will now use less of.
My biggest gripe is that an old friend from high school works on the NYT, so personally I'm a little disappointed that I won't be able to follow his career anymore. C'est la vie.
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Re: Bye Bye NYT
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SO this is good right
YES YES
this is GOOD
can't wait for them all to do it and then utter outrage one day when real news doesn't get to the people
OH wait it will just without them.......
tear down the wall
tear down the wall
tear down the wall
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Techdirt - prejudiced against the "old"
I am insulted by Techdirt's prejudical "NY Times saying that it only plans to be the paper of record for an older generation" ...
Either, because I am "old" I have enough money to pay for content mindlessly (ha!) or, because I am senile I pay for content.
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Re: Techdirt - prejudiced against the "old"
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Re: Techdirt - prejudiced against the "old"
Please charge money for your propaganda. You have helped spread the lies in support of war for enough regimes.
Gabe
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Masnick once again forgets: "I write, but I still need to eat."
Newspaper Writers have families, too. Children that need to eat, regardless of whether their parents sit around all day pondering the first principals of Being. Please make a donation to The Unemployed Newspaper Writers Guild. Maybe their children will be able to forge a better life for themselves using say, blog software.
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Re: Masnick once again forgets: "I write, but I still need to eat."
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Re: Re: Masnick once again forgets: "I write, but I still need to eat."
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Re: Masnick once again forgets: "I write, but I still need to eat."
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Re:
It'll work just as well as any paywall. That is, it won't.
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Re: Re:
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Re:
Answers: $1
Short: $5
Correct: $25
Snarky are still free
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Re:
Answers: $1
Short: $5
Correct: $25
Snarky are still free
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Re:
The only unique value they may have to offer is unusually high-quality investigation and commentary, both of which can also be achieved by most any other well-organized company with sufficiently talented employees that are practically ubiquitous in availability - and the larger audience would actually draw the best writers outside the paywall.
Unlike in the past, effective news organizations no longer require a large overhead to operate successfully, nor do they have a monopoly on its availability at any given location. Sucks for the legacy news companies, but it's great for everyone else. Again, there is no reason why people need to pay for services when their scarcity/marginal cost has dwindled to zero or near that. That's exactly what society should be striving for in everything.
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Re: Subscription Federation
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Paywall
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Re: Paywall
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Re: Paywall
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subscription federation.
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Re: subscription federation.
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Complex issue
I don't think anyone -dangerous idealists, teenagers and students who have never worked aside- believes information should be entirely free. Rather, the debate is who should be paying for that precious content. Should it be the consumer of it or could someone else pay for it in exchange for something else? That's our pendulum.
The paradigm shifted when the internet offered a means to access consumers with little or no upfront investment costs -no paper, no printers, no warehouses, no trucks, etc.. no more barrier to entry. Sit at your pc and blog.. pretty simple, hey? Every Dick and Jane can now blurr out an opinion -as I do here- in response to an opinion piece and we are all exhilarated with ourselves believing that what we write matters, so who needs paid content? Mike Masnik (whose articles I often enjoy) doesn't care, he makes a living off of the controversy itself and -I hope- a comfortable living.
But what about the news itself? Whose blog did you read to learn about the Haitian earthquake? Did you turn on your tv for which you most likely pay a subscription to? Did you go on the web to get the news from a recognized media outlet whose pages are loaded with advertisements? Fair amounts of money is spent to report that information and many outlets are competing with each other to get your attention. He who gets most attention gets most advertising dollars. But if that money is spread too thin and it becomes impossible for a news outlet to send journalists out, we will eventually be left with the Murdochs of the world to feed their interpretation of the news and hundreds of bloggers and talking heads to spin those feeds. More is less.
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Re: Complex issue
But why do those organizations have to be the only ones that can report on events? You know who else are primary sources? All the other people that were there. For instance, in Iran when the woman was shot and killed, it was a bystander with a camera that revealed the incident, not Iranian news organizations that never would have shown such a thing in a million years. Or when the snowball fight in D.C. went down and the cop pulled a gun, mainstream media just recycled the report of the police, which is that eyewitnesses were mistaken and nobody pulled a gun. Of course, it was a bystander with a camera that exposed the lie.
Now that virtually everybody has a camera and an easy means to distribute it to the world, anybody can be a primary source. Most of what the legacy news report on is just press conferences or quotes from the government and other players anyway. Anybody can do that.
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Re: Re: Complex issue
None of this is news until it is analyzed and evaluated in a greater context. That's what quality reporting and "news" is about and that's why news organisations often have several journalists working hours and hours on producing valuable content. Is this capability limited to the paper media or the big news organizations? Certainly not. But they have been competing in a pond for a long time during which they've learned to perfect their skills and that's why the NYT and at least a dozen other newspapers have gained recognition. Now that the pond has expended to a lake (an ocean?) there are probably hundreds of wannabe journalists with great writing skills who can now find alternative outlets to express their ideas. But the challenge remains: How are you going to make a living at blog.com if idealist newcomers are all willing to work for free? And who is going to read or even find you when 1000 others write about the same thing?
Aggregators are middlemen pulling the work of others and sticking advertisement all around it. How is that benefiting writers or those who pay the writers?
@Kat: Twitter?!? As I say above, saying "First!" doesn't make anything news. I wish NPR would read what you have to say about their "free" content... their money drives are all about getting paid for their hard work!
What I find totally amazing is that people are going to whine about their $20/year news subscriptions while giving away $150/month for the hald dozen channels they actually look at on their cable television...
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Re: Re: Re: Complex issue
WTF!?!
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Re: Complex issue
I've been involved with the newspaper business since before I could read---helping my mother fold & deliver papers before dawn, laying out stories on a light table with rubber cement, watching the big presses run at the distribution center---but I haven't received a daily newspaper since I left home for college, and I don't intend to change that.
All my news comes from "free" sources---news published online with advertisements, TV over-the-air with advertisements, even "listener-supported" public radio news doesn't require me to pay in advance for a product I may or may not feel is worthwhile! This doesn't mean the content providers are not getting paid, it just means they've found a way to make money without charging consumers directly. The NYT needs to ensure that their content is worth consuming, and then get it linked to from elsewhere so that their advertisers are getting the "eyeballs" they crave (and used to get from print ads). The paywall will hurt them more than it will help, I suspect.
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Re: Complex issue
>> care, he makes a living off of the controversy itself
>> and -I hope- a comfortable living.
Mike makes a very comfortable living. But most of the revenue is a part of Techdirt's back office business called "TechDirt BlackOPS".
Techdirt BlackOPS offers "business tactical training," and consulting under the company's subdivisions: TechDirt BlackOPS Training Center, TechDirt BlackOPS Security Consulting and TechDirt Canine.
BlackOPS provides "a spectrum of support to business, government, and civilian entities in creating marketable business models, business operations and solutions development." Their slogan is: "TechDirt BlackOps: Quit having your PR people send us press releases."
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Re: Complex issue
Not "should", "will". The important point is not that we want information to be free, but that economic forces tend to make information free, regardless of what anybody wants. Understand that, and fighting against it becomes obviously self-defeating. You're not fighting against what other people are trying to do to you, you're fighting against efficiencies that the market now enjoys. Absent government coercion, always a losing battle.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth - you aren't the "you" in the preceding paragraph, I'm referring to people (apparently including the NYT executives) who don't understand this.
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If the advertising model isn't profitable, it doesn't neccesarily mean that the news source isn't worth paying for. The case with the NYTs may be that indeed, their news isn't unique enough, and therefore, they are losing money.
Also the RIAA comparison isn't applicable. Do all record companies have one federation online for accessing music? NO. So until you try it, who knows. I understand the implication that the complex fee collection structure/profit structure may be untenable, but until it is tried, it's all opinion. It would be a big risk, but if it doesn't work, they could go back to the old way. Perhaps in some form it could work.
@Mike Masnick: You said it wouldn't work, but not why you think so. Just curious is all.
@Kat:The inconvenience of joining a cartel?! You would go to one web site, spend five minutes, and have access to multiple media sources. Wow...that just screams inconvenient right? LOL.
The idea intrigues me. It may not work, but it may.
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Re:
I don't argue that they are all equal in some absolute sense, but that they are all equal in terms of their value to me: that is, I haven't found their track record for accuracy and/or completeness to be much above abysmal. There may be (and most likely are) exceptions amongst the corporate media out there, but I have not yet become aware of them.
"There are many organizations that give a unique editorial/investigative slant that I would pay for."
There are some that I would (and do) pay for as well. Consumer Reports, for instance. There are no newspapers that are unique and valuable enough to me to read regularly, let alone that warrant paying for. That may change (although if I have to pay to find out if they're any good, I may never find out). Your economic equation is likely different than mine. Nothing wrong with that.
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which is a straw man in my opinion.
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Why write an article and give it away for free?
Actually, it makes perfect sense to do this, if your goal is to spread ideas. Even if your goal is to make money, you can still do so through advertising (and possibly offering an ad-free version of your site). However, the main reason why a person should write is not money, but rather to spread ideas. Copyright originated as an ingenious device for the ancien regime to suppress the spread of ideas after the invention of the printing press. Personally, I welcome the coming collapse of the New York Times and the other propagandists for the current Neo-Mercantilist regime. We need a media of real watchdogs, not the M$M lapdogs such as the New York Times, BSNBC, and Faux.
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Re: Why write an article and give it away for free?
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NYT online
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Re: NYT online
DO IT FAGGOT
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morons
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news industry
Regarding the web, there really are only a few sources of news and thousands of sites who republish the content.
I, for one, am getting tired of sites that are low on news and high on gossip and (not-necessarily accurate)opinion...
...and I just fell into the trap.
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NYTimes suicide
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=287720001030&ref=nf
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New York Times...Die, Die Now! Good Riddance!
Death to the tools of the Council on Foreign Relations!
Starving The Monkeys Continually,
John and Dagny Galt
Atlas Shrugged, Owners Manual For The Universe!(tm)
starvingthemonkeys dot com
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"journalism"
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"As much as it pains me to do so, this is one subject where I must agree with Mr. Michael Masnick at his Techdirt website. Paywalls for news are a last gasp for online news services that are very likely, if not certainly, doomed to failure.
Mr. Masnick has examined this and other instances where paywalls have been deemed a potential panacea for much of what currently ails newspaper services, and aptly notes that paywalls are in general an attempt to maintain unsustainable business models in the face of the paradigm shift associated with the internet."
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Re:
Why did you find it "interesting" when that comment was written by *you*?
Separately, why is it "interesting" that such a comment would be on a professional blog for attorneys. The Volokh blog has linked to Techdirt multiple times in the past.
"As much as it pains me to do so, this is one subject where I must agree with Mr. Michael Masnick at his Techdirt website.
Why does it pain you to agree with me?
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haha
actually i firmly believe that the world of news and opinion will greatly improve once these old dinosaurs finally go extinct. let's not forget that these paid liars, as with all establishment outlets, are responsible for covering up massive crimes abroad and here on this giant piece of land often so creepily referred to as "home" by our loving overlords. they are 100% complicit in covering up theft and murder on an unbelievable scale. i think the disinformation "fog" will be greatly reduced once these behemoths have finally relinquished their last breaths.
and for all those complaining that no business model will work....this only reflects your own short-sightedness and lack of creativity. it's the same giant wall that prevents you from conceiving of a world absent the extortion rackets and war profiteers. you think we NEED them. we need only to open the hearts and minds of people to the infinite possibilities....dont box yourself in with preconceived notions....never trust what anyone else tells you until it resonates with your own heart as true. freedom is here, we need only to reach out and take it.
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Re: haha
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I Know That These Folks
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I'll just trot on down to your job at the office, the store, the studio or whereever and do your job completely free. Then when you're fired because the boss is saving money on my free services I'll laugh. Then when the day comes that everyone follows this path and no one can afford anything and we're all out of a job....see where I'm going with this?
Now you can argue that you can get your information elsewhere, well bloggers get all their stuff somewhere right? I'd say the amount of re-posting opinionated bloggers overwhelmingly outnumbers the few bloggers who actually fancy themselves investigative journalists.
Sure you might like catching up on brand "X" blog, but what'll happen when brand "X" has to do the work themselves, finance themselves, and live? cough cough paywalls again.
sheesh
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Re:
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If advertisers ever wake up to web advertising rather than listen to what their contracted marketing team spits out, the web will change immediately.
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useless
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Re: useless
Finally, if I understand your rant, media is elitist and only serves their evil master, the government and its special interests....right? And your alternative would be?!? Because now that you've painted the world in black and white, I can't wait to hear the white knight story...
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Imagine them trying...
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Beating the original paywall
This one may work the same. The reasoning for the first time around was that they wanted Google users to find their news, so any traffic from Google to the NY Times was brought right in with no hassle.
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Elevator Operator
NPR radio just did an interesting story (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122457774) on the elevator system in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. One of the items in the story was about the Last Elevator Operator in D.C.--something we should all truly lament.
History is full of stories of how technology has made certain professions obsolete. Shall we pass legislation outlawing automatic elevators? Shall we subsidize elevator rides with admission fees--or even better, tax dollars?
Sadly the world of professional news journalism is undergoing major upheaval. Does this mean the end of news-gathering or quality reporting? To listen to some, you would think so. But take a broad look at history and you will likely realize that what is taking its place is far more useful and valuable to our culture than newspapers ever were. That is, unless you are one of those who hate to push the button to reach your floor, longing for the day when you had to pay someone else to operate the lift for you....
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NY TIMES
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moron
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