Yeah it wasn’t entirely ads, but that was the major factor along with the transition from print to digital.
Things do still have to get paid for. High quality journalism means paying high prices for journalists. There’s server costs and other overhead. Early on people were still buying the paper. Ads covered being able to put it online for free and people buying the paper paid the real bills.
As print died, that killed the main revenue stream. That meant more ads to keep the online side free and make money. But more ads meant people get more turned off by them and start using ad blockers. That kills that revenue stream, so you introduce a subscription that gives access to everything ad free.
Eventually, you get to where we are. You want it, you pay for it. Which is really just back to buying the paper, but digitally. Back in the day you bought the paper. Either you yourself did from the paper machine, a street corner paper stand, or you literally had a physical subscription and got it delivered. Or you read it for free when someone else paid for a delivery subscription, like the doctors office, the donut/coffee shop, or your work put it in the break room.
There is currently a subscription reversal because the model failed for now than it succeeded. NYT is in a spot where it could succeed off its established brand. But others it didn’t work. The trend is the subscription model fails. Times, WP, Atlantic and others couldn’t sustain it.
Also I’m left as fuck, I don’t care if quality is good or the model work to help some faceless group of shareholders. I’ll support whatever destroys anyone putting up pay walls online. Burn it all down. It’s the only way.
Yeah it wasn’t entirely ads, but that was the major factor along with the transition from print to digital.
Things do still have to get paid for. High quality journalism means paying high prices for journalists. There’s server costs and other overhead. Early on people were still buying the paper. Ads covered being able to put it online for free and people buying the paper paid the real bills.
As print died, that killed the main revenue stream. That meant more ads to keep the online side free and make money. But more ads meant people get more turned off by them and start using ad blockers. That kills that revenue stream, so you introduce a subscription that gives access to everything ad free.
Eventually, you get to where we are. You want it, you pay for it. Which is really just back to buying the paper, but digitally. Back in the day you bought the paper. Either you yourself did from the paper machine, a street corner paper stand, or you literally had a physical subscription and got it delivered. Or you read it for free when someone else paid for a delivery subscription, like the doctors office, the donut/coffee shop, or your work put it in the break room.
There is currently a subscription reversal because the model failed for now than it succeeded. NYT is in a spot where it could succeed off its established brand. But others it didn’t work. The trend is the subscription model fails. Times, WP, Atlantic and others couldn’t sustain it.
Also I’m left as fuck, I don’t care if quality is good or the model work to help some faceless group of shareholders. I’ll support whatever destroys anyone putting up pay walls online. Burn it all down. It’s the only way.