Can Journalism Survive? The Media Elite on Its Future
October 21, 2024 5:17 AM Subscribe
We gathered 57 of the most powerful people in media — and rather than simply anoint them, we put them to work. What follows is a tour through the state of journalism, assembled from dozens of hours of extremely candid conversations. (Bypass NY Magazine’s business model here). WARNING: a 14,000-word article.
And that the second question is "Can any of those companies get people to pay for their journalism?"
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:12 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:12 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
Even in journalism's heyday, people generally paid for exactly ONE very cheap newspaper subscription for the whole family, and depended on freely available radio/TV news broadcasts for everything else. It's completely unrealistic for online newspapers and magazines these days to expect people to pay for a hundred different subscription services to get the same level of information (... and if the argument is going to be that it is a higher level of information, can someone please make the case for why we need it? Are they hoping to make money off of anxiety they create in us by shoving too much information down our throats, perhaps?).
There is something very rotten with this system and it is not our unwillingness to pay for those 100+ subscriptions. I click the unpaywalled links perfectly guilt-free.
posted by MiraK at 6:26 AM on October 21 [15 favorites]
There is something very rotten with this system and it is not our unwillingness to pay for those 100+ subscriptions. I click the unpaywalled links perfectly guilt-free.
posted by MiraK at 6:26 AM on October 21 [15 favorites]
I ain't paying Jeff Bezos for the WaPo: he's got enough money already.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:33 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:33 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
Ctrl-F "defector": zero results.
There's hardly a person in this set of interviews I'd trust to run a hot dog stand--god help us that they're getting quoted on the future of the industry in general.
posted by Four String Riot at 7:25 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
There's hardly a person in this set of interviews I'd trust to run a hot dog stand--god help us that they're getting quoted on the future of the industry in general.
posted by Four String Riot at 7:25 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
Even in journalism's heyday, people generally paid for exactly ONE very cheap newspaper subscription for the whole family, and depended on freely available radio/TV news broadcasts for everything else
I guess it depends what "people" and "generally" means. Many families would buy a local paper and a major metro paper (ie, my family did the Trenton Times and the New York Times; when I moved to California many people were doing some local rag for the Peninsula, I forget the name, and the San Francisco Chronicle). Magazines like Time and Life were huge. People would do newsstand and magazine rack buys as well as subscriptions.
It's completely unrealistic for online newspapers and magazines these days to expect people to pay for a hundred different subscription services to get the same level of information
I'm not sure what you mean about a hundred different subscriptions. If you subscribe to the WP or NYT, you are getting more information than if you were subscribing to your local paper and watching TV news in the '70s.
At least on MeFi, my impression is that people want to be able to read (well, access) every story published anywhere. It's not that getting what we now call "content", even high quality content, is hard; it's that when New York publishes one specific story they want to be able to see it and if they can't the idea of doing the equivalent of buying a newsstand copy or going down to the library is considered ridiculous.
posted by mark k at 8:31 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]
I guess it depends what "people" and "generally" means. Many families would buy a local paper and a major metro paper (ie, my family did the Trenton Times and the New York Times; when I moved to California many people were doing some local rag for the Peninsula, I forget the name, and the San Francisco Chronicle). Magazines like Time and Life were huge. People would do newsstand and magazine rack buys as well as subscriptions.
It's completely unrealistic for online newspapers and magazines these days to expect people to pay for a hundred different subscription services to get the same level of information
I'm not sure what you mean about a hundred different subscriptions. If you subscribe to the WP or NYT, you are getting more information than if you were subscribing to your local paper and watching TV news in the '70s.
At least on MeFi, my impression is that people want to be able to read (well, access) every story published anywhere. It's not that getting what we now call "content", even high quality content, is hard; it's that when New York publishes one specific story they want to be able to see it and if they can't the idea of doing the equivalent of buying a newsstand copy or going down to the library is considered ridiculous.
posted by mark k at 8:31 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]
One executive expressed frustration with Gen Z this way: “They want everything right away. They want everything fast. They’re super-ambitious in the wrong ways. The people that seem to me to succeed are the ones that just do good work, really push themselves, and assume the right people are going to notice. And guess what? The right people always notice.
That's some top-tier Old Man Privilege complaining, that is.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:31 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
That's some top-tier Old Man Privilege complaining, that is.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:31 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
Even in journalism's heyday, people generally paid for exactly ONE very cheap newspaper subscription for the whole family, and depended on freely available radio/TV news broadcasts for everything else.
The article has a really good summary which tracks with my experience around the collapse of print journalism. It skips over a bit the classified collapse (job ads, movie listings, buy and sell, personals) which all moved to specialized sites online.
The fact is that consumers never almost never have paid the costs for news; it's been advertisers (and before that patrons) or in some cases, public funds.
The NYT is an interesting case discussed in the article; when they launched their cooking site I was involved in development of something similar (that died on the vine) and man, they really spent the time to take a service approach and nail it. Same with its work on Wordle etc. Those funds float the kind of work that you need to do to cover news (whether they do this properly or not is something else.) It also helps to be the paper of record - my Canadian public library provides NYT access on that basis, and that is definitely a source of revenue for them. See if your library provides access to Defector.
I think this is a solid piece if you take it as "here's what people in the industry think." They do have some pretty good gets there, even if Your Fav Indy Site is not represented.
Here in Canada, Facebook blocks news links because of the Liberals' attempt to make FB pay for news, and the result is not that people are going back to their local papers. Our national broadcaster has made serious errors and is being gutted by its own board (and shortly will probably be defunded by a Conservative federal gov't.) For an extremely disturbing look at this, today's Canadaland (note: there's a pitch for Canadaland at the top of it) is about how the main news source in Regina is run by a dumpster company, with the level of journalism you would expect from that statement.
Essentially, Canadian news is in its death throes and nothing has replaced it yet (although there are bright lights, they are tiny.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:48 AM on October 21 [5 favorites]
The article has a really good summary which tracks with my experience around the collapse of print journalism. It skips over a bit the classified collapse (job ads, movie listings, buy and sell, personals) which all moved to specialized sites online.
The fact is that consumers never almost never have paid the costs for news; it's been advertisers (and before that patrons) or in some cases, public funds.
The NYT is an interesting case discussed in the article; when they launched their cooking site I was involved in development of something similar (that died on the vine) and man, they really spent the time to take a service approach and nail it. Same with its work on Wordle etc. Those funds float the kind of work that you need to do to cover news (whether they do this properly or not is something else.) It also helps to be the paper of record - my Canadian public library provides NYT access on that basis, and that is definitely a source of revenue for them. See if your library provides access to Defector.
I think this is a solid piece if you take it as "here's what people in the industry think." They do have some pretty good gets there, even if Your Fav Indy Site is not represented.
Here in Canada, Facebook blocks news links because of the Liberals' attempt to make FB pay for news, and the result is not that people are going back to their local papers. Our national broadcaster has made serious errors and is being gutted by its own board (and shortly will probably be defunded by a Conservative federal gov't.) For an extremely disturbing look at this, today's Canadaland (note: there's a pitch for Canadaland at the top of it) is about how the main news source in Regina is run by a dumpster company, with the level of journalism you would expect from that statement.
Essentially, Canadian news is in its death throes and nothing has replaced it yet (although there are bright lights, they are tiny.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:48 AM on October 21 [5 favorites]
>If you subscribe to the WP or NYT, you are getting more information than if you were subscribing to your local paper and watching TV news in the '70s.
Sure. However it is no longer enough to just read NYT or WaPo, that is not a sufficient level of information (or access to information) for a person to be able to do some very normal, everyday things like participate in online discourse with beloved online communities like MetaFilter.
These are our social spaces in this day and age, for some people these are their ONLY social spaces, and meaningful participation in these social spaces is impossible unless we have a hundred different subscriptions to be able to read all the posted articles. Or unless we are willing to climb over paywalls. So from a "why are we unwilling to do the equivalent of going to the newsstand and buying ourselves a copy" - this is why.
But I was talking about the so-called death of journalism from the opposite end. The thing is, the NYT's user base is larger than it literally ever was. While there are no numbers available for the 1970s that I can find easily, I did see that the number of subscribers in 2000 was 1.12 million. As of August 2024 however they have nearly 11 million paid subscribers.
So tell me again, why is journalism dying? Is it REALLY because we posted a way here for MeFites to scale the paywall? Somehow our refusal to pay for NYT articles is killing journalism even though they have eleven times as many subscribers as before digital subscriptions were a thing? Come on.
posted by MiraK at 8:53 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
Sure. However it is no longer enough to just read NYT or WaPo, that is not a sufficient level of information (or access to information) for a person to be able to do some very normal, everyday things like participate in online discourse with beloved online communities like MetaFilter.
These are our social spaces in this day and age, for some people these are their ONLY social spaces, and meaningful participation in these social spaces is impossible unless we have a hundred different subscriptions to be able to read all the posted articles. Or unless we are willing to climb over paywalls. So from a "why are we unwilling to do the equivalent of going to the newsstand and buying ourselves a copy" - this is why.
But I was talking about the so-called death of journalism from the opposite end. The thing is, the NYT's user base is larger than it literally ever was. While there are no numbers available for the 1970s that I can find easily, I did see that the number of subscribers in 2000 was 1.12 million. As of August 2024 however they have nearly 11 million paid subscribers.
So tell me again, why is journalism dying? Is it REALLY because we posted a way here for MeFites to scale the paywall? Somehow our refusal to pay for NYT articles is killing journalism even though they have eleven times as many subscribers as before digital subscriptions were a thing? Come on.
posted by MiraK at 8:53 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
At least on MeFi, my impression is that people want to be able to read (well, access) every story published anywhere. It's not that getting what we now call "content", even high quality content, is hard; it's that when New York publishes one specific story they want to be able to see it and if they can't the idea of doing the equivalent of buying a newsstand copy or going down to the library is considered ridiculous.
Well yes, of course they do, because the stuff is being posted to us FOR US TO READ AND DISCUSS and it's super irritating to be presented with a thing unprompted, urged to read and discuss, and then be presented with a bill for it!
Honestly the problem may not be with media but more that the MeFi model just isn't good for the world as it exists now.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:53 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
Well yes, of course they do, because the stuff is being posted to us FOR US TO READ AND DISCUSS and it's super irritating to be presented with a thing unprompted, urged to read and discuss, and then be presented with a bill for it!
Honestly the problem may not be with media but more that the MeFi model just isn't good for the world as it exists now.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:53 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
when New York publishes one specific story they want to be able to see it and if they can't the idea of doing the equivalent of buying a newsstand copy or going down to the library is considered ridiculous.
What is that equivalent, though? I’m not sure where I’d find a print copy of New York, and they don’t sell online articles or issues a la carte. Also I don’t know if looking at an archived version is different for their bottom line compared to reading it at the library?
posted by smelendez at 9:00 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
What is that equivalent, though? I’m not sure where I’d find a print copy of New York, and they don’t sell online articles or issues a la carte. Also I don’t know if looking at an archived version is different for their bottom line compared to reading it at the library?
posted by smelendez at 9:00 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this or not, but here's the pitch:
posted by fedward at 9:00 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
On and off the record with:Make what you will of that collection of people.
Imran Amed, founder and editor-in-chief, The Business of Fashion. | Willa Bennett, editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. | Jeremy Boreing, co-founder and co-CEO, The Daily Wire. | Graydon Carter, founder and co-editor, Air Mail. | Sewell Chan, executive editor, Columbia Journalism Review. | Leroy Chapman Jr., editor-in-chief, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. | Charlamagne tha God, co-host, The Breakfast Club. | Eva Chen, vice-president of fashion, Meta. | Joanna Coles, chief creative and content officer, The Daily Beast. | Kaitlan Collins, anchor, CNN’s The Source. | Sam Dolnick, deputy managing editor, the New York Times. | Mathias Döpfner, CEO, Axel Springer SE. | Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief, ProPublica. | Bryan Goldberg, CEO, Bustle Digital Group. | Emily Greenhouse, editor, The New York Review of Books. | Glenn Greenwald, host, System Update; co-founder, The Intercept. | John Harris, co-founder and global editor-in-chief, Politico. | Radhika Jones, editor-in-chief, Vanity Fair. | Almin Karamehmedovic, president, ABC News. | Jon Kelly, co-founder and editor-in-chief, Puck. | Lauren Kern, editor-in-chief, Apple News. | Gayle King, co-host, CBS Mornings. | Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief, The Information. | Hamish McKenzie, co-founder, Substack. | Wendy McMahon, president and CEO, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures. | Kevin Merida, former executive editor, the Los Angeles Times. | John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief, Bloomberg. | Janice Min, founder and CEO, Ankler Media. | Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube. | Matt Murray, executive editor, the Washington Post. | Samira Nasr, editor-in-chief, Harper’s Bazaar. | Mel Ottenberg, editor-in-chief, Interview. | Bill Owens, executive producer, CBS’s 60 Minutes. | Jonah Peretti, co-founder and CEO, BuzzFeed, Inc. | Jimmy Pitaro, chairman, ESPN. | Ramesh Ponnuru, editor, National Review. | Keith Poole, editor-in-chief, the New York Post Group. | Betsy Reed, editor, The Guardian US | Alison Roman, writer and chef. | Maer Roshan, co-editor-in-chief, The Hollywood Reporter. | Carolyn Ryan, managing editor, the New York Times. | Ben Shapiro, host, The Ben Shapiro Show; co-founder, The Daily Wire. | Sam Sifton, assistant managing editor, the New York Times; founding editor, New York Times Cooking. | Bill Simmons, founder and managing director, The Ringer; head of podcast innovation and monetization, Spotify. | Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief, Semafor. | Andrew Ross Sorkin, founder and editor-at-large, the New York Times’ DealBook; co-anchor, CNBC’s Squawk Box. | Simone Swink, senior executive producer, ABC’s Good Morning America. | Jake Tapper, anchor and chief Washington correspondent, CNN. | Nicholas Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic. | Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief, The Wall Street Journal. | Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO, Axios; co-founder, Politico. | Bari Weiss, founder and editor, The Free Press. | Will Welch, global editorial director, GQ and Pitchfork. | Gus Wenner, CEO, Rolling Stone. | Michael Wolff, author. | Matthew Yglesias, writer, Slow Boring; co-founder, Vox.com. | Jeff Zucker, CEO, RedBird IMI.
posted by fedward at 9:00 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
Hell, I came in to say that I wish I could do the equivalent of buying a newsstand copy or buy blocks of articles or whatever. But the economics of subscriptions are too good; Annual Recurring Revenue from forgetful affluent customers is way better than trying to win retail money with good articles from penny-pinching curmudgeons.
I've been putting all of my money into local independent news (Denverite, Colorado Sun, Westword, BusinessDen). This year finally forced me to give NYT the boot, so I've been mooching NPR and the BBC. This feels like more Information to me because, well, I'm not the globe-trotting policy expert I thought I'd be while in college, so I can't translate a nuanced understanding of Moldovan politics into any remotely nuanced action.
It's kind of a permaculture zones philosophy - I have the most influence on and need the most information about the spheres where I can directly observe and act. Reading the NYT was causing me to spend money and rage on things I can barely influence, which was perfectly fine with them.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:12 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
I've been putting all of my money into local independent news (Denverite, Colorado Sun, Westword, BusinessDen). This year finally forced me to give NYT the boot, so I've been mooching NPR and the BBC. This feels like more Information to me because, well, I'm not the globe-trotting policy expert I thought I'd be while in college, so I can't translate a nuanced understanding of Moldovan politics into any remotely nuanced action.
It's kind of a permaculture zones philosophy - I have the most influence on and need the most information about the spheres where I can directly observe and act. Reading the NYT was causing me to spend money and rage on things I can barely influence, which was perfectly fine with them.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:12 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
I pushed my way through, skimming in spots, and my primary observations are: (1) man, they let a lot of anti-union talk through, and not in the "enough rope to hang yourself" way; and (2) they acknowledge the seemingly coordinated effort to highlight Biden's age and push him to withdraw his candidacy, but they don't talk about the "courtesy" of sanewashing that the same media has been granting to Trump. It feels like a blindspot.
posted by fedward at 9:48 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
posted by fedward at 9:48 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
So tell me again, why is journalism dying? Is it REALLY because we posted a way here for MeFites to scale the paywall? Somehow our refusal to pay for NYT articles is killing journalism even though they have eleven times as many subscribers as before digital subscriptions were a thing? Come on.
Journalism is dying (as a paid gig, for many people, and as something you can access about your community for many more) for complex economic and cultural reasons, a lot to do with advertising and revenue models. Some to do with right-wing people deliberately killing it. And some because your local paper used to reprint national stuff and now you can get that on the internet at any moment. But mostly the economics.
However, the way MeFites would rather indulge in their latest slam on the NYT, a comment that probably has been made here what, conservatively 1,500 times, and donate here to do that rather than engage with the article's broader implications is one reason journalism will have a harder time recovering. It's a drop in the bucket here of course, but that's one of the social trends and why Meta and Google (reminder that MF is part of that network) continues to make bank. And it's human.
The NYT has positioned itself to make money well in that winner-take-all environment and because it gets people to subscribe for access to "stuff" where news is just one type of "stuff."
Because I love small press success stories I clicked through to McBearclaw's awesome news sources. I really like the Colorado Sun on first glance, so I read the 2023 report on it which included these quotes:
"It is important to note that despite innovative efforts by the Sun to heal Colorado’s news ecosystem, it is still a long way from where it should be. Moody points out that two decades ago Colorado had twice as many journalists"
"The fact is, however, news fatigue is affecting readership. According to Ryckman, “We are seeing what a lot of news organizations around the country are seeing, which is that a lot of people are burned out from the news. There are people that are worried about inflation and worried about recession and are hanging on to their money a little more tightly.”"
"Finally, the Sun must continue to find creative solutions to mend its slowing membership growth rate. [emphasis mine] For the organization to continue covering topics close to the public, the public should remain their primary focus as a revenue source as well."
posted by warriorqueen at 9:54 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
Journalism is dying (as a paid gig, for many people, and as something you can access about your community for many more) for complex economic and cultural reasons, a lot to do with advertising and revenue models. Some to do with right-wing people deliberately killing it. And some because your local paper used to reprint national stuff and now you can get that on the internet at any moment. But mostly the economics.
However, the way MeFites would rather indulge in their latest slam on the NYT, a comment that probably has been made here what, conservatively 1,500 times, and donate here to do that rather than engage with the article's broader implications is one reason journalism will have a harder time recovering. It's a drop in the bucket here of course, but that's one of the social trends and why Meta and Google (reminder that MF is part of that network) continues to make bank. And it's human.
The NYT has positioned itself to make money well in that winner-take-all environment and because it gets people to subscribe for access to "stuff" where news is just one type of "stuff."
Because I love small press success stories I clicked through to McBearclaw's awesome news sources. I really like the Colorado Sun on first glance, so I read the 2023 report on it which included these quotes:
"It is important to note that despite innovative efforts by the Sun to heal Colorado’s news ecosystem, it is still a long way from where it should be. Moody points out that two decades ago Colorado had twice as many journalists"
"The fact is, however, news fatigue is affecting readership. According to Ryckman, “We are seeing what a lot of news organizations around the country are seeing, which is that a lot of people are burned out from the news. There are people that are worried about inflation and worried about recession and are hanging on to their money a little more tightly.”"
"Finally, the Sun must continue to find creative solutions to mend its slowing membership growth rate. [emphasis mine] For the organization to continue covering topics close to the public, the public should remain their primary focus as a revenue source as well."
posted by warriorqueen at 9:54 AM on October 21 [4 favorites]
from the article:
posted by HearHere at 10:15 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
“Journalism with a capital J is no good to anyone if nobody’s reading it.”i also appreciated the mention of pagerank [wiki]
…
“We have to be careful about not using the ‘in peril’ narrative too much, where people will think it’s already all dead and there’s nothing left to save,” says CJR’s Sewell Chan, who spent three years running the nonprofit Texas Tribune. Chan points to two bright spots in efforts to support local news: the National Trust for Local News, which acquires vulnerable community papers and invests in their development, and the American Journalism Project
posted by HearHere at 10:15 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
I find it... unsurprising that one of their findings is "niche" coverage is essential to success when virtually everyone they interview is from a niche publication.
I mean, sure, it works, I guess. Combine a focus on a topic that some people are passionate about and multiple it by global reach, and bingo. But it doesn't solve the real problem, which is providing news at a local level that gets people engaged with issues and elections. Look through that list of contributors and there's one person from a traditional metro newspaper (and I'd argue that Atlanta is hardly typical or particularly challenged).
And there are traditional papers that are making it work, and not by the shrink-and-slash methods that put the industry in its current circumstances. It's a shame that they didn't interview Steve Grove, publisher of the Minnesota Star-Tribune. The paper just changed its name to reflect how it is expanding both in coverage area and staffing to make it a true statewide paper with a focus on public service. It is investing big-time in digital products while still producing a paper version. And while they benefit from having a zillionaire owner, I'm told by friends there that the paper is profitable, or very nearly so.
I hope it works, because this is the journalism future we need.
posted by martin q blank at 10:54 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
I mean, sure, it works, I guess. Combine a focus on a topic that some people are passionate about and multiple it by global reach, and bingo. But it doesn't solve the real problem, which is providing news at a local level that gets people engaged with issues and elections. Look through that list of contributors and there's one person from a traditional metro newspaper (and I'd argue that Atlanta is hardly typical or particularly challenged).
And there are traditional papers that are making it work, and not by the shrink-and-slash methods that put the industry in its current circumstances. It's a shame that they didn't interview Steve Grove, publisher of the Minnesota Star-Tribune. The paper just changed its name to reflect how it is expanding both in coverage area and staffing to make it a true statewide paper with a focus on public service. It is investing big-time in digital products while still producing a paper version. And while they benefit from having a zillionaire owner, I'm told by friends there that the paper is profitable, or very nearly so.
I hope it works, because this is the journalism future we need.
posted by martin q blank at 10:54 AM on October 21 [3 favorites]
Journalism: Please stop hitting yourself?
As much as I like making snarky comments about the NYT, I'll concede that they do enough good work that their existence is a net positive. But also they keep fucking up in spectacular ways from their coverage of the Iraq War to their sanewashing and normalization of an increasingly extremist Republican party. It's so hard to accept nuance and desire to provide a variety of viewpoints when they're stoking a moral panic over trans kids or giving literal insurrectionists who want to arrest journalists a platform.
Can't you just accept that anyone even remotely conservative has long ago fled print media for the right wing noise machine? Why do you keep doing this shit?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:58 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
As much as I like making snarky comments about the NYT, I'll concede that they do enough good work that their existence is a net positive. But also they keep fucking up in spectacular ways from their coverage of the Iraq War to their sanewashing and normalization of an increasingly extremist Republican party. It's so hard to accept nuance and desire to provide a variety of viewpoints when they're stoking a moral panic over trans kids or giving literal insurrectionists who want to arrest journalists a platform.
Can't you just accept that anyone even remotely conservative has long ago fled print media for the right wing noise machine? Why do you keep doing this shit?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:58 AM on October 21 [2 favorites]
freely available radio/TV news broadcasts
That points to the unpatched money hole, though. Broadcast media had to share a scarce wavelength resource and we-the-nations had rules about how they did it. Public service rules for content, and rules for advertising that weren’t great (payola!) but apparently weren’t capturable by single actors.
McBearclaw’s permaculture analogy is great. I’ll add that for zones I can’t directly influence I don’t need to-the-minute news, so weeklies and reviews are better for me.
I would further add that despite jokes about day old newspaper, you could often find a reader for one for days. Always polite to pass it on.
posted by clew at 11:19 AM on October 21
That points to the unpatched money hole, though. Broadcast media had to share a scarce wavelength resource and we-the-nations had rules about how they did it. Public service rules for content, and rules for advertising that weren’t great (payola!) but apparently weren’t capturable by single actors.
McBearclaw’s permaculture analogy is great. I’ll add that for zones I can’t directly influence I don’t need to-the-minute news, so weeklies and reviews are better for me.
I would further add that despite jokes about day old newspaper, you could often find a reader for one for days. Always polite to pass it on.
posted by clew at 11:19 AM on October 21
We subscribe to the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail, delivered to our door. Both papers are a pale reflection of what they once were, and the Citizen doesn't even publish a hard copy on Mondays anymore. I could take or leave the Globe, but Mrs. Fimbulvetr likes it, however the Citizen we keep for the scraps of local news it still publishes. Given how much of the Ottawa Citizen is just reprints of stories from the Washington Post I definitely feel no need to shovel more money that way.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:28 AM on October 21
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:28 AM on October 21
I think I saw an ad from the AP suggesting that I could subscribe to them directly, which sounds v appealing as they still actually employ journalists and editors, right? Couldn’t find it on their website though.
posted by clew at 11:36 AM on October 21
posted by clew at 11:36 AM on October 21
clew, not sure if this is what you mean, but you can get email newsletters from AP on a variety of subjects. Here's the signup page.
posted by martin q blank at 11:39 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]
posted by martin q blank at 11:39 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]
Journalism is suffering because of the loss of ad revenue. Even with 10 million subscribers, they are making less revenue than they did 15 years ago. Subscription numbers and pricing is also not really comparable as they have so many deals and their retention rate is much lower as it's easier to cancel an online sub.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-new-york-times-company-by-source/
The information-needed-to-participate aspect is interesting. Basically everyone pulls AP stories and covers major events, even those with the loosest paywall. So we still have the information access we used to, where it's easy to find out about major events like elections, natural disasters, and wars. So you can choose a sub based on other stuff like their arts coverage but still get all the basics. But a site like metafilter will always suffer in a paywall environment because people want to discuss the unique articles, and those by definition are outliers.
posted by hermanubis at 12:03 PM on October 21
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-new-york-times-company-by-source/
The information-needed-to-participate aspect is interesting. Basically everyone pulls AP stories and covers major events, even those with the loosest paywall. So we still have the information access we used to, where it's easy to find out about major events like elections, natural disasters, and wars. So you can choose a sub based on other stuff like their arts coverage but still get all the basics. But a site like metafilter will always suffer in a paywall environment because people want to discuss the unique articles, and those by definition are outliers.
posted by hermanubis at 12:03 PM on October 21
As much as I like making snarky comments about the NYT, I'll concede that they do enough good work that their existence is a net positive. But also they keep fucking up in spectacular ways from their coverage of the Iraq War
Don’t know that this one can be counted as an honest fuck-up, exactly, which is why it’s important to have a diversity of viable news sources. It’s fundamentally unlikely today there will be one that is good and unbiased on everything.
At the same time I’m also less of an NYT hater than a lot of people here, because they sit at a certain intersection of size/scope, reasonable density of legit reporting in spite of the bullshit, and having figured out a viable business model unlike most of the publications that should be their peers, that I just don’t feel like they have many actual peers.
posted by atoxyl at 12:18 PM on October 21
Don’t know that this one can be counted as an honest fuck-up, exactly, which is why it’s important to have a diversity of viable news sources. It’s fundamentally unlikely today there will be one that is good and unbiased on everything.
At the same time I’m also less of an NYT hater than a lot of people here, because they sit at a certain intersection of size/scope, reasonable density of legit reporting in spite of the bullshit, and having figured out a viable business model unlike most of the publications that should be their peers, that I just don’t feel like they have many actual peers.
posted by atoxyl at 12:18 PM on October 21
The Minnesota Star-Tribune also apparently wanted to get into sports betting...I think their redesign is neat - Forbes covered it too - and they too are going to non-profit funding of at least some activities. It's clear in the first article their owner funded some of the redesign (which is good news.)
When I was searching for the Nieman lab article I vaguely remembered, this Reddit thread came up and now I want to send the Strib team cookies man.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:29 PM on October 21 [1 favorite]
When I was searching for the Nieman lab article I vaguely remembered, this Reddit thread came up and now I want to send the Strib team cookies man.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:29 PM on October 21 [1 favorite]
The Washington Post is, in theory, my local paper, although their local coverage went way downhill when they thought they could use Bezos money and the Trump bump to level up in national importance. They certainly seem to believe they're peers with the NYT, anyway, but as TFA points out, they fumbled any advantages they had and haven't had a clear direction since the Trump bump gave out. It also seems pretty obvious that Bezos has lost interest in keeping that kind of investment going indefinitely, and the bungled leadership changes he tried to make really hurt them, both in internal morale and external prestige.
Meanwhile the NYT just keeps painting huge targets on itself, like the "bob and weave" headline next to some sanewashing of a eugenics-filled Trump rant, inspiring this post from former Public Editor Margaret Sullivan:
We still pay for Sunday delivery of the Times because my wife won't let me cancel it. That said, I personally find it hard to believe they're not actively trying to get Trump reelected and I have cut way back on how often I actually check the home page or open articles.
posted by fedward at 12:53 PM on October 21
Meanwhile the NYT just keeps painting huge targets on itself, like the "bob and weave" headline next to some sanewashing of a eugenics-filled Trump rant, inspiring this post from former Public Editor Margaret Sullivan:
What’s more, the adjacency of these stories suggests equivalence between a traditional democracy-supporting candidate and a would-be autocrat who stirs up grievance as a political ploy.She also calls out the NYT's Michael Barbaro for asking a disingenuous question about the two headlines, so that's fun.
I showed these headlines and stories to my graduate students at Columbia University’s journalism school on Friday morning. I didn’t ask leading questions or try to tell them what to think. They didn’t hesitate in identifying the problem.
We still pay for Sunday delivery of the Times because my wife won't let me cancel it. That said, I personally find it hard to believe they're not actively trying to get Trump reelected and I have cut way back on how often I actually check the home page or open articles.
posted by fedward at 12:53 PM on October 21
Journalism is dying (as a paid gig, for many people, and as something you can access about your community for many more) for complex economic and cultural reasons, a lot to do with advertising and revenue models. Some to do with right-wing people deliberately killing it. And some because your local paper used to reprint national stuff and now you can get that on the internet at any moment. But mostly the economics.
Not to put words in the mouth of other posters, but I think what MiraK is asking is a much narrower question than you've answered here. By their own raw figures, the NYT reports paid readership in excess of 10x their subscriber base in 2000. Even if you assume 0% subscription cost growth (or, hell, I'll even spot you NEGATIVE growth to deal with whatever offset there is from margins on print vs. online media) over the ensuing 24 years, that should still far outpace inflation/increases to the cost of doing business as a news agency. It's not at all clear to me how it can still just be a question of economic factors, when year-over-year subscriber growth has been north of 10% for two+ decades.
posted by Mayor West at 1:01 PM on October 21
Not to put words in the mouth of other posters, but I think what MiraK is asking is a much narrower question than you've answered here. By their own raw figures, the NYT reports paid readership in excess of 10x their subscriber base in 2000. Even if you assume 0% subscription cost growth (or, hell, I'll even spot you NEGATIVE growth to deal with whatever offset there is from margins on print vs. online media) over the ensuing 24 years, that should still far outpace inflation/increases to the cost of doing business as a news agency. It's not at all clear to me how it can still just be a question of economic factors, when year-over-year subscriber growth has been north of 10% for two+ decades.
posted by Mayor West at 1:01 PM on October 21
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posted by constraint at 6:04 AM on October 21 [11 favorites]