Fuck Newspapers
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- _niko0
I don't know, maybe we've had it too good for too long.
I have no problem chipping in and supporting wikipedia or PBS or local jazz stations when they hold fundathons to keep them afloat. i have no problem buying magazine subscriptions or paying monthly for netflix, but it just rubs me the wrong way when it comes to news. It should be for the masses and easily accessible and free.
- alot of it is. the question is, are you willing to support newspapers that invest in great local journalism.prophetone
- if you are not, then you still get free news... it's just chicken mcnugget quality and will slant toward gossip bs on repeat.prophetone
- as you said before, CBC, BBC and others are hardly chicken nuggets or gossip rags._niko
- news isn't objective, it's subjective, so you should pay for it. interpreting and presenting news should never be a free servicedoesnotexist
- be freedoesnotexist
- jacklalane0
News is not a fundamental right or freedom, it is a business. Stick with CBC then, it will always be free because it is funded by your hard earned tax dollars. If it was so important for you to continue to read more than 10 articles a month on the Star you would find a way to save the $2.50 a week it costs. Kickstarter campaign?
- colin_s0
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/…
it's also really important to see that organizations that do actually cherish the idea of journalism and the fourth estate are pushing to reinvent it in the digital age.
part of the issue here is that now publishing in any sort of magnificent format is different than it used to be. you used to need a good print designer to create a dynamic way of telling a story visually - then there was just the pressman. now, you need a conjunction of editors, writers, designers, and developers in order to have the story take shape across various platforms and devices.
we really do need these institutions, and they need to be supported financially.
- Fantrom0
Well they better do something quick as they already lost billions.
- Miguex0
I see your point, but in reality.. you should feel grateful for the free resources you have available at the moment, not pissed off because of the ones you have to pay for.
Don't ever forget that there are people working on those organization and as industry is going thought a DRASTIC change, they are trying to figure out where is their money coming from in the future.
If you don't like the idea, go somewhere else for the service, but if you do like what they are doing, then why not support it?
Eventually, the power is on the consumers like yourself. If no one likes the idea, the model will have to adapt or die.
- prophetone0
Newspapers are not alone in this.
- boobs0
One of the big complaints about the declining money in the newspaper business is that there is a lot less money spent on foreign reporting. But, you know, most foreign countries have reputable news organizations. Why can't newspapers here get the articles from, say, a newspaper in Berlin, or one in Tokyo, and translate those, and publish them here.
I for one would be more interested in what was in the Japanese newspapers, or the Korean newspaper, or the German press, than I would be in learning what some American traveling over there on an expense account thinks.
The reporting, is, by and large, being done (obviously, except in countries that have egregious press controls). But it doesn't show up here until it's been run through a lot of American editorial filters, which support massive American prejudices.
Obviously the model of American journalism for the last century wasn't so great. Americans of nearly every stripe and strata were incredibly ignorant of the world out there. (I remember Reagan asking, "Is France in NATO?" when he was President.) So, it's not as though the past model was so great in serving to make an informed public.
And even touted news organizations like the New York Times have made enormous basic news blunders--like their endless stream of articles supporting the war on Iraq--in foreign coverage.
So, it's not as though we're going from some great system, to chaos (which is how the news organizations portray it).
I think a news aggregator that took the top 2 stories from each of the top two papers in each G20 nation, and translated them, would be better than anything we ever had in the past. And it wouldn't cost much, I don't think.
- great points, it's why Al Jazeera has become so popular, people love seeing news from a different perspective and from_niko
- ...the horses mouth._niko
- even though it is incredibly biased.doesnotexist
- _niko0
I can see the need for the pay model in the past. There were tons of expenses associated with the printing and distribution of a daily paper.
Now with the click of a mouse, i can get news from all over the world from every news service.
It's redundant to pay $19.99 for the globe and mail and then $9.99 for the toronto star and then $9.99 for national post when they all feed me the exact same stories, the majority of which are from the Associated press or Reuters anyway, when I can get the same stories and then some from CBC, BBC, Google, yahoo and others for free.
And local news? I learn about anything of importance on QBN from i_monk and others hours or days before the Star breaks it lol, not to mention twitter or facebook.
I'd rather directly support small journalists and bloggers than help line the pockets of Conrad Black, Rupert murdoch, Berlusconi and other big media moguls.
- canuck0
Yeah, I noticed the star is now Subscription. Wonder if the advertisements are gone once you pay for it. doubt it.
- BrokenHD0
they're all owned by the Koch brothers and Rupert anyway.
- HijoDMaite0
"I think they're all delusional. With the wealth of free and user generated news content currently online, is there any reason for people to pay for their news?"
what about the experience, professionalism and reputation of a seasoned newspaper reporter? What you are saying is you would rather get the same news recycled by a free site. Of course I'm only talking about local news because that's what newspapers focus on.
- uuuuuu0
the same people who are loyally subscribed to the paper will pay for it online. more people are using the net regularly and will naturally pay for their fave paper. its the same market and they are basically anticipating their readers to start to use the net more so they are there waiting. it wouldn't work 5 years ago but the market is changing.
i think its mostly older professionals who are used to newspaper subscriptions but are now online a lot with tablets and laptops. i also think a lot of traditional mainstream newspapers are not interested in being apart of the whole web 2.0 social media world, they want a different audience and one that doesn't want to be on reddit. they want an AOL experience.
- i wouldn't be surprised if they will offer group/business rates to give a company access to the paper.uuuuuu
- they will likely have ads as well and their readers won't even blinkuuuuuu
- also they can advertise the online subscription straight to their readers so its not like they are hard to reachuuuuuu
- another possibility is creating a paper/online combo subscription to get them on the netuuuuuu
- print is dead, it costs too much so they want to migrate their readers to a digital model and make more, spend lessuuuuuu
- BusterBoy0
Age of entitlement...hooray. Fuck that, food should be free as well.
- thats not a bad idea..SlashPeckham
- I got a free bag of Phileas Fogg crisps with my free Evening Standard yesterday...NonEntity
- ...usually I wouldnt bother wasting time with the paper, I just took for the crisps and threw it away...NonEntity
- *took it for the crispsNonEntity
- fadein110
This is nothing new - NYT and FT in UK have been doing this for ages.
- animatedgif0
Desperately trying to keep the industry dinosaurs well fed when they should have starved by now
- animatedgif0
Just charge people 10 cents to post each comment under an article. The Daily Mail and Guardian would be fucking loaded.
- doesnotexist0
_niko, supporting journalists directly and not the companies they work for would result in your news being so chaotic, you wouldn't be able to digest it. though they are bloated perhaps, do you not realize how big and complicated a machine like this is? being able to source and track information globally? i wouldn't want to just pay the journalist, but the publisher.
you can say information and news should be free all you want, but when it's happening news is a highly subjective thing and i wouldn't want something spitting objective facts at me. i would want a seasoned mind giving me their take on an event and what kind of implications that event might have, how it might effect me, &c.
- scoops0
News paper reporters need to get paid too, and not by the number of posts they can put up on a blog. Look at the the big headlines from last night and today about the NSAs breaking of privacy rules. Setting aside the obviousness of the headline, Washington Post had that story for a month or two. They spent that time vetting and researching and gaining nuanced insight into the issues which let them put out a well reported and well written piece that most of the US news media is quoting this morning.
You don't get that kind of reporting from free media. They don't have the time or resources to let 1 or more reporters focus on a story for a month that will run for one day.
Solid journalism is hard to develop, sustain and fund. It shouldn't be mocked because they have to pay the bills.
- free media? Most online news channels have advertisingfadein11
- true, but online advertising revenue is a fraction of what print once was.scoops
- exactly, it's not enough, even for the big boysprophetone
- and yes "free" because that's what you payprophetone