No one has ever tried to turn Twitter or anything like it into a subscription platform. We don’t know if it’ll work or not. Substack is doing well. It may be that people only want to pay for what they want to see, but I don’t waste my time with what Pfizer wants me to see. Why should people?
No one has ever tried to turn Twitter or anything like it into a subscription platform. We don’t know if it’ll work or not. Substack is doing well. It may be that people only want to pay for what they want to see, but I don’t waste my time with what Pfizer wants me to see. Why should people?
Individuals have far more diverse interests and curiosities than a handful of giant multinationals. We know what we get with ad based social medias and it’s awful. It’s a failed model. When Pfizer is the customer you can’t talk about harms from Pfizer (we’ve seen this in both traditional and social media). That applies to anything. The customer has the power.
If we want to get journalists back to 'discovering the truth and reporting about it', instead of 'being activists for some position' then removing 'being activists for large corporations' is necessary but not sufficient. The good thing about being supported by advertising revenue from Mom and Pop hardware stores, restaurants and the like is that small businesses wanted to attract customers from a broad spectrum of society. They didn't want to be niche. The subscription model is all about finding your niche and serving it well enough to be paid for it. This is all well and good when the niche is some sort of hobby or special interest. It's more difficult when what you want is 'general news without the nudging' and 'investigations into all abuses of power, whoever does it'. At least, despite there being a whole lot of us who want exactly that and would pay for it -- it hasn't miraculously driven out the activism sort in response to consumer demand.
I disagree. Mom and pop hardware shops are few and hanging on by a thread. They can’t support media - local or otherwise. The clock doesn’t get turned back. We aren’t going beck to when my Dad was a journalist in the 1970’s and local papers could actually report stories of interest accurately. He walked away from journalism all together after being offered a job by The New York Times in his late 20’s (that came with a requirement to move to NYC). The days of the poor kids growing up to be journalist were already ending then.
On average Substack and other independent writers seem to be more honest, and more willing to cite actual source documents/ data than the msm has been in my 2 decades of being an adult. It does lack the general “here is what’s going on in the world,” but perhaps that’s exactly what you could get from a subscription model at Twitter. What they are doing now doesn’t work. New leadership under the old model probably won’t either. The model is the driving force of the problem.
It’s also ok to have a lot niche in journalism. I’ve specialized in international tax for over 15 years. Even the most basic reporting on individual income taxes is the US is deeply flawed in a material way 99% of the time (unless it comes from somewhere like tax foundation). I see zero evidence it’s different in any other industry or profession. Maybe if there are more niche reporters at least some of them will have some idea what the heck they are talking about.
I don't think we disagree as much as you believe we do. What I want to do is to understand why it was possible that in the 1970s your father could actually report stories of interest accurately, what changed between then and now, and how can we build financial incentives to get more real journalism. It's not that I am against niche, it is just that the niche 'journalism like we had in the 1970s' doesn't seem to be making money for anybody right now.
A business model based on 'have the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pay for it' will not give this to us. Having big corporations pay for it is not working either. But subscriptions haven't worked for the Athletic, and now they have ads, which is causing the people who subscribed for the ad-free experience to cancel and not renew. I see the Athletic becoming the journalistic arm of the Gambling industry, which will pay the rent, but we are back to 'you are selling my eyeballs to the real customer, when I thought I was the customer when I bought my subscription'.
I look at the writings of journalism advisor/pundits (i.e. people who advise journalists how to make money doing journalism) such as Thomas Baekdal (who is big in Europe, not so sure if he is large on your side of the pond). He has been promoting the subscription model but also promoting journalism as advocacy. He very much thinks that journalists should find out the truth and then relentlessly stuff it down a readership base that wants to be told how to think and how to feel.
There's no room for 'present the facts and let the readers decide for themselves'. And I would like there to be.
No one has ever tried to turn Twitter or anything like it into a subscription platform. We don’t know if it’ll work or not. Substack is doing well. It may be that people only want to pay for what they want to see, but I don’t waste my time with what Pfizer wants me to see. Why should people?
Individuals have far more diverse interests and curiosities than a handful of giant multinationals. We know what we get with ad based social medias and it’s awful. It’s a failed model. When Pfizer is the customer you can’t talk about harms from Pfizer (we’ve seen this in both traditional and social media). That applies to anything. The customer has the power.
If we want to get journalists back to 'discovering the truth and reporting about it', instead of 'being activists for some position' then removing 'being activists for large corporations' is necessary but not sufficient. The good thing about being supported by advertising revenue from Mom and Pop hardware stores, restaurants and the like is that small businesses wanted to attract customers from a broad spectrum of society. They didn't want to be niche. The subscription model is all about finding your niche and serving it well enough to be paid for it. This is all well and good when the niche is some sort of hobby or special interest. It's more difficult when what you want is 'general news without the nudging' and 'investigations into all abuses of power, whoever does it'. At least, despite there being a whole lot of us who want exactly that and would pay for it -- it hasn't miraculously driven out the activism sort in response to consumer demand.
I disagree. Mom and pop hardware shops are few and hanging on by a thread. They can’t support media - local or otherwise. The clock doesn’t get turned back. We aren’t going beck to when my Dad was a journalist in the 1970’s and local papers could actually report stories of interest accurately. He walked away from journalism all together after being offered a job by The New York Times in his late 20’s (that came with a requirement to move to NYC). The days of the poor kids growing up to be journalist were already ending then.
On average Substack and other independent writers seem to be more honest, and more willing to cite actual source documents/ data than the msm has been in my 2 decades of being an adult. It does lack the general “here is what’s going on in the world,” but perhaps that’s exactly what you could get from a subscription model at Twitter. What they are doing now doesn’t work. New leadership under the old model probably won’t either. The model is the driving force of the problem.
It’s also ok to have a lot niche in journalism. I’ve specialized in international tax for over 15 years. Even the most basic reporting on individual income taxes is the US is deeply flawed in a material way 99% of the time (unless it comes from somewhere like tax foundation). I see zero evidence it’s different in any other industry or profession. Maybe if there are more niche reporters at least some of them will have some idea what the heck they are talking about.
I don't think we disagree as much as you believe we do. What I want to do is to understand why it was possible that in the 1970s your father could actually report stories of interest accurately, what changed between then and now, and how can we build financial incentives to get more real journalism. It's not that I am against niche, it is just that the niche 'journalism like we had in the 1970s' doesn't seem to be making money for anybody right now.
A business model based on 'have the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pay for it' will not give this to us. Having big corporations pay for it is not working either. But subscriptions haven't worked for the Athletic, and now they have ads, which is causing the people who subscribed for the ad-free experience to cancel and not renew. I see the Athletic becoming the journalistic arm of the Gambling industry, which will pay the rent, but we are back to 'you are selling my eyeballs to the real customer, when I thought I was the customer when I bought my subscription'.
I look at the writings of journalism advisor/pundits (i.e. people who advise journalists how to make money doing journalism) such as Thomas Baekdal (who is big in Europe, not so sure if he is large on your side of the pond). He has been promoting the subscription model but also promoting journalism as advocacy. He very much thinks that journalists should find out the truth and then relentlessly stuff it down a readership base that wants to be told how to think and how to feel.
There's no room for 'present the facts and let the readers decide for themselves'. And I would like there to be.