I really dislike ad driven publications. I’m not opposed to paying for quality news publication, but for something like NYT, there’s only a couple articles a month I come across that I’m really interested in reading. There problem is that there’s 4-5 other paywalled publications where I have that same issue. I’m interested in their content, I just can’t justify the subscription price for the small amount of content from them I’ll actually consume, and I really can’t justify paying subscriptions for 4-5 publications at once.
I would pay $5-10 a month for a news aggregator for paywalled publications. It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles, it could be opened up to independent writers as well (e.g. integrate your substack with it). Maybe even an additional fee that includes digital magazine publications as well.
I can’t imagine it would be worse for the industry (unlike Spotify), as it already seems like journalism/news is hovering above collapse. They would be making money off of people who weren’t providing revenue previously.
There is. It’s called Apple News+
I use this, it’s quite good. No complaints about it, no ads, reading articles doesn’t feel like a chore. I definitely recommend it
Mostly… the advertising is disguised as top 10 articles with Amazon links. 50% journalism 40% articles 10% Reddit copied BuzzFeed “articles”
I feel like 50% journalism is pretty good these days
Agreed :)
And it’s easy as pie to block those channels.
I guess that’s true, but I’m not one to ever click on buzz feed articles and they are usually quite clearly marked
I don’t want to read full magazines. I need more or less what an RSS reader can do. But in good.
This isn’t just full magazines…
I’d love to try out Apple News, but as far as I can tell you can only access it on an Apple device, there’s no web access :(
Also it’s not available in Switzerland so I can’t use it unfortunately…
The same btw goes gor movies in my oppinion. Why do I have to have 3 Streaming services for a couple hundred movies when I have 70 Million songs on evey streaming services? I hope this will eventually change…
Movies and TV used to be 1 streaming service. So careful what you wish for. We might end up with a streaming service per record label.
Literally this. I’ve never used it, but it sounds like what the OP is looking for.
It should be noted that, in the US at least, your library card will often give you online access to many publications.
My entire state has access to NYT, Chicago tribune, USA today, a ton of other popular newspapers and our local newspaper through their libraries for free.
Time for a library card.
Are u fr why don’t they say this in school man that’s awesome
Check out Kanopy and Libby while you’re at it.
This. Is. Exactly. What. I. Wish. For. A. Very. Long. Time.
Nowadays every news site has paywalls. I’m willing to pay for good work, but if I pay a single news provider, I’m missing too much. Nobody is willing to pay for every publisher. Even if an article is just a few cents I neither want to be annoyed with the payment process nor do I want to manually keep track of how much I spent for news in a month.
We really need a platform providing a news flat rate, aggregating most larger publishers.
No they can fuck off with the charging me money to read their article thing. I would prefer that they load that shit up to the gills with ads that I then block
I’m not exactly an expert, but I doubt the newspaper gets paid for blocked ads.
Nope you’re spot on, of course they don’t. Something something ability something something need, gating information except to those who can afford to support their organization should classify them as something other than news media.
Bruh newspapers were never free.
He does have point, though. People who can’t afford to pay for information shouldn’t be left out.
Which is why public libraries get newspaper and periodical subscriptions.
You’re right. To me, libraries are were books live, so I forgot about the newspapers.
I mean they’re free now if I pirate the shit out of them
Yeah so when you’re done soiling yourself, the rest of us will be having a grown-up conversation about keeping news sustainable and accessible.
Where does quality news come from if people aren’t willing to pay for it?
Clearly people are willing to pay for it. They’re profiting 50 million a year.
My buck a week isn’t going to have any impact on whether or not they can run the paper, I can’t fathom making the argument that someone who can’t afford to contribute to the already massively successful paper should have zero access to it.
I mean this isn’t exactly the answer you’re looking for but in the UK we do, the BBC doesn’t have ads and the cost is covered by taxes rather than paying a “Spotify premium” subscription
I recently found ground.news. it is an interesting news aggregator sight in that it combined multiple sources for each story. It doesn’t really answer some of your needs but for each story it shows you which sources are pay-walled and which ones aren’t.
Omg this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I do a lot of media monitoring for work and have been using MBFC to try to measure how reliable my current Google Alerts are, because it throws up some weird and wild news sources.
You’re use of spotify as an example is a good reason. Journalism isn’t making money and Spotify’s royalties are (or at least were not long ago) the lowest amongst the music streaming services. The ads on their own sites pay a lot more than any aggregator would give them.
I think this would actually drive shittier quality.
Current models, like the preceding model of physical paper delivery, have a relatively fixed income stream from the subscriber base. They make the same amount of money whether the news day is “Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor” level or whether the most interesting story is that a German Shepherd won the AKC dog show.
Under a service that aggregates and pays a minor amount per click, how does NYT stand out above WaPo? Or Ap or Reuters? Click bait headlines and incomplete stories so they can write multiple and get more clicks, because each click is not worth very much.
I think the better model for NYT et al would be to offer a punch card like option: 10 articles, $15… or whatever. They should have enough data to determine what the average number of articles read is, per subscriber, to determine what the tipping point is, and capture some new pay-as-you go subscribers.
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This seems like a direction https://ground.news/ could go in.
Isn’t news free though?
notices the
.ukon your username
Because good journalism is expensive and the space is so much more competitive in the digital age. Also greed, usually it’s greed preventing us from having good things.
What, something that keeps removing features?
I agree the convenience would be great. But the reason it’s rare is that the business model does not work out for the newspapers.
This would lead to reduced revenue for the newspapers.
We already live in the world where news is behind paywall and disinformation is free. This would lead to collapse of more newspapers and further deterioration of the landscape.
We need a better model than Spotify to apply to news.
Something reasonably close but not exactly that would be feedly
It could be set up in a way that the publications get paid per view of their articles
This is idea behind the BAT token and the Brave Browser¹. Unfortunately it won’t break through paywalls, but ad blocking is pretty good and in theory is less guilt.
¹ although, there is this
