Alternatively, how would you suggest content that takes time and effort to make be funded?
I get that it's sad, but I'd gladly pay a monthly sub to use a not enshitified internet, rather than the cluster fuck of ads and data stealing that exists in the modern web. Spending time on the 90s and early 2000s internet and comparing it to this dumpster fire makes me so darn sad.
> Subscription revenue is gone because newspapers don't monopolize their localities.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean newspapers don't utilize their localities as much as they could, or that they're unable to create monopolies on local information nowadays?
Just genuinely curious, I have a brother in law who's the editor at his small town newspaper, so I'm tangentially interested in this kind of thing.
A local newspaper traditionally paid wire services[1] like the Associated Press or Reuters for the majority of their articles.
They would only assign journalists for important or local content.
The daily newspaper was a news aggregation subscription service more than a news creation service.
It was inherently geographical because they had to print the newspaper overnight and deliver it to you every morning.
They would also select different articles depending on what might interest readers, e.g. an Iowa paper might syndicate an article on corn subsidies that a Floridian paper would ignore.
Computers fixed both the distribution problem and the recommendation problem.
The New York Times can distribute news nationwide instantly and simultaneously tailor my feed to my specific interests. They can do so better than local publications thanks to economies of scale.
[1] named after telegraphic wire, which is how old this business model is.
This is getting totally out of hand. Nobody can pay a subscription for every single news site.
If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites.
I've tried a dozen different paywall bypass services including bpc & archive.today and I can't get it to bypass this. I think the Google Rich Text trick might work but I'm on mobile atm.
So much of the Internet is pay-walled now.
It’s sad. It never occurred to me we’d get here.
Why is it sad for people to be compensated for their work?
That's not what OP said.
Sites displayed ads. Then they decided, or found, that ads didn't bring in enough revenue, so they added paywalls.
Paywalls are annoying, they don't scale, and they break the promise of an open web. All that is sad.
Alternatively, how would you suggest content that takes time and effort to make be funded?
I get that it's sad, but I'd gladly pay a monthly sub to use a not enshitified internet, rather than the cluster fuck of ads and data stealing that exists in the modern web. Spending time on the 90s and early 2000s internet and comparing it to this dumpster fire makes me so darn sad.
The web is still open, anyone can post anything they want and anyone can see it (in the US, at least).
An open web, to me, does not imply access to all websites.
People still have to be paid. or they won't be paid and you just get different flavors of slop.
It costs money to pay journalists.
You get that money through advertising or subscription revenue.
Advertising revenue is gone because everyone has adblock. You couldn't adblock TV or a physical newspaper.
Subscription revenue is gone because newspapers don't monopolize their localities. Anyone that isn't the New York Times is struggling.
> It never occurred to me we’d get here.
My parents were journalists. The business model has been broken before I could read.
> Subscription revenue is gone because newspapers don't monopolize their localities.
What do you mean by this? Do you mean newspapers don't utilize their localities as much as they could, or that they're unable to create monopolies on local information nowadays?
Just genuinely curious, I have a brother in law who's the editor at his small town newspaper, so I'm tangentially interested in this kind of thing.
A local newspaper traditionally paid wire services[1] like the Associated Press or Reuters for the majority of their articles.
They would only assign journalists for important or local content.
The daily newspaper was a news aggregation subscription service more than a news creation service.
It was inherently geographical because they had to print the newspaper overnight and deliver it to you every morning.
They would also select different articles depending on what might interest readers, e.g. an Iowa paper might syndicate an article on corn subsidies that a Floridian paper would ignore.
Computers fixed both the distribution problem and the recommendation problem.
The New York Times can distribute news nationwide instantly and simultaneously tailor my feed to my specific interests. They can do so better than local publications thanks to economies of scale.
[1] named after telegraphic wire, which is how old this business model is.
This is getting totally out of hand. Nobody can pay a subscription for every single news site.
If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites.
I've tried a dozen different paywall bypass services including bpc & archive.today and I can't get it to bypass this. I think the Google Rich Text trick might work but I'm on mobile atm.
Every newspaper had a price. People were happy with this.