this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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I often wonder how news websites are supposed to survive. People (myself included) want unbiased news websites without paywalls and ads.
How are they supposed to pay their staff?
I'm fine with ads when they don't take up half my screen or try and shift the page to to trick me into clicking on them, should a stuck with sidebar adds.
If your website is a business, you need to have a business model. If your business model isn't sustainable, because it relies on not annoying visitors too much, maybe look for a better one.
Btw, most newspages have adapted some 10 years ago already, showing the important news for free and additional details with paid account. A lot have the balance off tho.
News sites are in need of a paradigm shift.
I think we might get to a system where summaries of news are free, but indepth articles and videos are paid.
Oh and I believe that news sites should scrap subscription only models, I should be able to pay 1-2EUR for a single article that I want to read, with no risk of the payment being a subscription.
Obviously subscriptions models should still be an alternative if the users want it.
It's nigh impossible to get many users to read past the headline. A summary is what 98% of people would actually want (and a good news story really is just a summary anyway) so the pay-through-rate would be so close to zero that I can't see this model working.
That is a fair point, which just makes me wonder what else new services can offer that people will pay for....
I'd happily pay a nominal fee for news that was unbiased reporting of facts rather than opinion, and didn't bombard me with ads or sell my data. It just doesn't exist so I use aggregators to get a general vibe across sources.
That's easy to say, but when it comes to finding my credit card to type in my info for yet another news website, I can guarantee that I just don't give enough fucks about any individual news story.
I have mine saved in my password manager, but I'd rather they use a different payment processor (where it's also saved) anyway. I try to avoid giving card info directly to smaller sites.
If a news website that I could trust met my criteria, it wouldn't be 'just another' news site, it'd be my source of truth. So like I said, I would happily pay for that. And I'd pay a lot more than an average subscription.
So, a subscription with extra steps? Or is the problem that you just can’t find any trustworthy sites?
Yes. I've never found a news site that meets my criteria
The honest answer are general fees like they are used for public broadcasters. It’s not a perfect system either and it requires significant effort to keep things neutral, but overall it seems to have the best results if you compare the quality of the outcome.
Who gets to collect revenue from the fees though? Where do you draw the line, are you cutting off independent journalism?
I’m not saying it’s an easy line to draw because you obviously don’t want to create incentives for bad journalism, but don’t want to make it too high of a bar to get into in the first place. I think you’d need to take things like the number of readers, the factuality of headings and content, the originality and the investigative value into account and be able to at least temporarily cut of bad outlets that spread fake/hate/… while at the same time ensuring that inconvenient truths make it out.
It’s not an easy task, but I feel there is more room to get somewhere useful than with the current model of billionaire-owned media that outdo each other with rage-bait and inaccurate/misleading/falsly balanced/biased reporting…
Subscription models. Some sites even combine some free articles with it, so that anyone can look into their works, but not necessarily everything. If it fits you, you get a subscription. Sort of the same way people would pay for their daily newspaper.
It can be argued that "news" should be free, and there are some news site that are basically picking up AP/AFP/whatever and repost these, but actual journalism do requires work.
That’s what they do, then users cry about paywalls
It’s lose/lose
The best business model is one that allows users to pay what they want. Unfortunately that means most of these sites would go out of business, which is not what they want so they'll keep forcing more and more invasive ads on people until the dam truly breaks.
The news sites that we have today are an inversion of what they should be. As a journalist, you wield tremendous power that is entrusted to you. Being able to set the narrative for millions of others is a privilege and, in fact, something that journalists should be paying to enjoy (e.g. footing the bill for web hosting).
I don't agree with this take that people should pay to work. Journalist have family to feed as well.