The key to the fourth estate is to separate it from biased monetary concerns: government funding (can be cut if critical of the government) and corporate funding (aka ads- if you criticize the advertisers, they leave).
If news can effectively transition to direct reader support, it is a good thing for everyone.
NYT has yet to prove that this direction is profitable...
The problem then, of course, is that readers will abandon you if you don't tell them what they want to hear. You end up creating an echo chamber for political ideology X or economic policy Y.
I disagree; corporate funding (ads and advertisers) need not have influence over the institution itself in order to place ads in a news source. From a journalistic standpoint, your value is based upon how trustworthy you are as a company. If you are trustworthy, you have readers, and you will never be short on advertisers.
Readers can stop reading if the newspaper stops agreeing with its viewpoints perhaps even more readily than advertisers can. Coming from Utah most of the uber-conservatives that live near me mock the New York Times as propaganda yet watch Fox News and call it "truth." Unfortunately, as was mentioned offhand in Aaron Sorkin's "Newsroom," today, "People don't choose the opinions they want, they choose the facts they want." Reader supported is just as prone to bias as is corporate supported.
An interesting sidebar (not mentioned in the NYMag piece) is that the $88 million loss is due to a write down of $194.7 for About.com [1]. About.com reportedly took a heavy traffic hit from the Google Panda/Penguin update.
I want the NY Times to stay around, so I bought their digital delivery. What rubs me the wrong way is the arbitrary distinction between devices...
You pay more for nytimes.com + iPhone + iPad. It's a little silly. Charge me 1 price regardless of where I consume it! I bought the full $4.38 / week plan but I think it's too much when it goes to $8.75. I can switch to paying $3.75 and just instapaper all the articles I want to my iPad.
In my case, it was cheaper to pay for a physical Sunday delivery subscription which includes digital. I don't really want the Sunday paper, but it's a better deal.
I agree. In fact I held off for a long time just b/c the pricing is so...stupid.
They have three different plans combining web, smartphone, and tablets. All priced by the week, charged by the month.
Then a totally standalone Kindle plan. I don't even know what the plans are for Nook, Sony Reader, or Kobo Reader (all mentioned on their digital subscription page without pricing).
Ugh. If I think about this any more I'll be forced to cancel my Kindle subscription.
Newspapers are no longer the primary, or most effective connecting point for ideas and information between people.
From where I see it, Tomorrow's generation simply doesn't use newspapers the same way as anyone has in the last 200 years.
Paywalls are another kiss of death for newspapers that are already searching for relevancy in today's world. I have zero clue why they're doing them again, they had tried them before and failed. Short of industry wide collusion, if one paper in town charges, and the other doesn't, all the online traffic will go to the free one. Not to mention we can get more information, quicker, from multiple sources online and it's only going to get easier.
The rise of bloggers on newspaper websites shows how many other places we're willing to get our information.
I don't want newspapers to go away. I like the experience of reading a paper. It's almost relaxing compared to the constant distractions from screens.
Still they're massively laying off people and not publishing on certain days. Newspapers need to find a way to make money and be sustainable. Maybe there's a middle of a new kind of subscription of not getting access to the articles right away without paying.
My background: Worked in the newspaper industry for 4 years around the last dotcom boom. Remember the horror then..
With the proliferation of "noise news" online, I find that my two options for filtering the noise are (1) peer curated sites like HN, or (2) to pay for (what is hopefully) quality writing from sources such as NYT or the Economist.
Check out how many HN articles on Sundays come from the NYTimes. They put out an enormous volume of high quality content that a lot of people seem to find relevant.
The majority of the BBC's revenue comes from the British government, which mandates a nearly £146 "licensing fee" to every person in Britain who receives access to broadcast television. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Revenue
This in stark contrast to the NYT, where readers voluntarily opt to fund the paper by purchasing subscriptions.
"Supported by the readers" is an extremely (and intentionally) misleading title. Reader revenue has only just surpassed advertiser revenue, and The New York Times still has huge net losses quarter after quarter (this round we're talking $88.1 million).
Also, I can't be the only one that finds the tone of the article ironic considering how hard it was to work your way through the spammy ads before actually reading it.
This is the same problem with The Economist's digital subscription. Really annoying full-screen click through ads between a lot of pages. And generally these seem to be just one or two different ads in one issue, so they're not interesting either.
This is expected. The "free" income from advertising goes down, many papers who only make a partial effort get in trouble, leaving more of the market free, and then the best papers who do have real value and produce real value conquer that market. That's because people are willing to pay for their paper if only they can choose theirs from a smaller set of quality papers rather than from a gazillion advertisement-funded attempts at journalism.
What I don't get about newspapers in the US in general, is that it seems that their adoption is extremely low, compared to European countries. NY Times, supposedly the third largest newspaper, has a daily circulation of 1mm whereas De Telegraaf (the biggest newspaper in The Netherlands, a country with a population of only 16mm) has a daily circulation of 700K!
Why is that, don't people read newspapers in the US?
The New York City metro area has a population of about 20M. NYT has only really expanded into the national market in the last 15 years. It is primarily a local/regional paper. NYC has a higher periodical subscription rate than other regions, partly due to the reliance on mass transit. NYT competes with the Wall Street Journal and other local/regional dailies.
I think people in the US read a lot of local papers. If you sum them up it should be more than the 1mm readers of the NY Times. That's because the US is huge compared to Holland and people everywhere tend to be primarily interested in what are the most immediate news to them.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/annual_...
[+] [-] hamidpalo|13 years ago|reply
The Economist on the other hand is mostly analysis, and have extremely dedicated readers who gladly pay the premium.
[+] [-] warfangle|13 years ago|reply
If news can effectively transition to direct reader support, it is a good thing for everyone.
NYT has yet to prove that this direction is profitable...
[+] [-] CamperBob2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|13 years ago|reply
Readers can stop reading if the newspaper stops agreeing with its viewpoints perhaps even more readily than advertisers can. Coming from Utah most of the uber-conservatives that live near me mock the New York Times as propaganda yet watch Fox News and call it "truth." Unfortunately, as was mentioned offhand in Aaron Sorkin's "Newsroom," today, "People don't choose the opinions they want, they choose the facts they want." Reader supported is just as prone to bias as is corporate supported.
[+] [-] veidr|13 years ago|reply
I think it's an interesting milestone, and wonder how many other papers have now had that happen (and how many were already doing that).
EDIT: mention the loss
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/business/media/the-new-yor...
[+] [-] latch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudonim|13 years ago|reply
You pay more for nytimes.com + iPhone + iPad. It's a little silly. Charge me 1 price regardless of where I consume it! I bought the full $4.38 / week plan but I think it's too much when it goes to $8.75. I can switch to paying $3.75 and just instapaper all the articles I want to my iPad.
https://img.skitch.com/20120730-xky5qiifbdf2ki122swbwnbhb3.p...
[+] [-] jaaron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subpixel|13 years ago|reply
They have three different plans combining web, smartphone, and tablets. All priced by the week, charged by the month.
Then a totally standalone Kindle plan. I don't even know what the plans are for Nook, Sony Reader, or Kobo Reader (all mentioned on their digital subscription page without pricing).
Ugh. If I think about this any more I'll be forced to cancel my Kindle subscription.
[+] [-] niels_olson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|13 years ago|reply
From where I see it, Tomorrow's generation simply doesn't use newspapers the same way as anyone has in the last 200 years.
Paywalls are another kiss of death for newspapers that are already searching for relevancy in today's world. I have zero clue why they're doing them again, they had tried them before and failed. Short of industry wide collusion, if one paper in town charges, and the other doesn't, all the online traffic will go to the free one. Not to mention we can get more information, quicker, from multiple sources online and it's only going to get easier.
The rise of bloggers on newspaper websites shows how many other places we're willing to get our information.
I don't want newspapers to go away. I like the experience of reading a paper. It's almost relaxing compared to the constant distractions from screens.
Still they're massively laying off people and not publishing on certain days. Newspapers need to find a way to make money and be sustainable. Maybe there's a middle of a new kind of subscription of not getting access to the articles right away without paying.
My background: Worked in the newspaper industry for 4 years around the last dotcom boom. Remember the horror then..
[+] [-] hkmurakami|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heyitsnick|13 years ago|reply
> "I used to do the NYT but after the subscription thing I discovered the BBC News is much more focused on the US than you would expect."
The BBC, of course, has always been funded by the readers, and not the advertisers. Just not US readers.
[+] [-] dmcintosh|13 years ago|reply
This in stark contrast to the NYT, where readers voluntarily opt to fund the paper by purchasing subscriptions.
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|13 years ago|reply
Also, I can't be the only one that finds the tone of the article ironic considering how hard it was to work your way through the spammy ads before actually reading it.
[+] [-] halayli|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natrius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bergie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colincsl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yason|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melvinmt|13 years ago|reply
Why is that, don't people read newspapers in the US?
[+] [-] molo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fghh45sdfhr3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cagenut|13 years ago|reply