Online News is Broken(caseyaccidental.com)
caseyaccidental.com
Online News is Broken
http://caseyaccidental.com/online-news-is-broken/
11 comments
Jeremy is absolutely right here from the perspective of news organizations (which his company OwnLocal is trying help solve). There's a lot of experimentation going on - paywalls, porous paywalls, conferences and events (e.g. Techcrunch and the Atlantic), premium programs without paywalls (Reddit, Ars), sponsored content, syndication schemes, sponsored sections, etc.
But as for readers, while there's an evergrowing way to to discover, follow, and comment on news. HN, Reddit, Twitter, FB, among other social sites continue to grow. There's some algorithmic approaches to finding you personalized news (which has been tried MANY times), but there's a few good ones out there including Prismatic and the soon-to-be released Prismatic.
(Yes, I'm leaving out those who write for reasons other than direct money, but right now, online tools seem to be doing many of the quality writers pretty well - though I'm sure there are "C-list" bloggers who don't get the exposure they ought to).
So, the OP might be solving a portion of readers' problems - the overload and context problem, but Mims is dead-on -- the real problem with online news is how can you make enough money to pay smart people to write great stories in a world where advertisers have millions of other places to put their ads at prices much cheaper than what a news org needs to fund journalism like this: http://on.wsj.com/Qyu1DF
But as for readers, while there's an evergrowing way to to discover, follow, and comment on news. HN, Reddit, Twitter, FB, among other social sites continue to grow. There's some algorithmic approaches to finding you personalized news (which has been tried MANY times), but there's a few good ones out there including Prismatic and the soon-to-be released Prismatic.
(Yes, I'm leaving out those who write for reasons other than direct money, but right now, online tools seem to be doing many of the quality writers pretty well - though I'm sure there are "C-list" bloggers who don't get the exposure they ought to).
So, the OP might be solving a portion of readers' problems - the overload and context problem, but Mims is dead-on -- the real problem with online news is how can you make enough money to pay smart people to write great stories in a world where advertisers have millions of other places to put their ads at prices much cheaper than what a news org needs to fund journalism like this: http://on.wsj.com/Qyu1DF
[deleted]
I completely agree with you. Putting a new UI on news won't fix it, neither will new ways of aggregating and sorting the stories that currently exist.
But there are two sides to the equation you mention, that revenue from ads needs to be greater than the cost of content. I love what your company (http://ownlocal.com) is doing, but I also don't think you should rule out the other side of the equation. What if a company can create a more compelling solution at a lower price? (That's what we're trying to do at http://grasswire.com).
But there are two sides to the equation you mention, that revenue from ads needs to be greater than the cost of content. I love what your company (http://ownlocal.com) is doing, but I also don't think you should rule out the other side of the equation. What if a company can create a more compelling solution at a lower price? (That's what we're trying to do at http://grasswire.com).
It bothers me that the only paid model for content is to pay for the source. I enjoy some pieces the New York Times publishes, but I don't want to pay for the whole pipeline. I would however, be happy to pay something for individual pieces of quality content.
Additionally, much of the content I enjoy reading is produced by people not in it for the money, so there is no way to pay for it even if it did have monetary value to me.
Additionally, much of the content I enjoy reading is produced by people not in it for the money, so there is no way to pay for it even if it did have monetary value to me.
The fundamental issue that people are oblivious to is this.
If you pay for the whole pipeline, then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about their brand. This gives them incentives to get the news right.
If you pay piecemeal (with money or eyeballs, doesn't matter), then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about how effective the headline is at grabbing your attention. The quality of the article doesn't matter so much because it doesn't affect your buy decision. And what people don't care about, gets shortchanged.
The internet has caused us to move from a subscription model to a piecemeal model, and the quality of news has suffered. But this is not new. A hundred years ago the "yellow press" was also on a piecemeal model. So, more recently, were British tabloids. And they were crap in the same way that the internet news today is crap.
Unless you're either relying on a third party curation that you trust, or are purchasing the brand, quality is going to suffer.
If you pay for the whole pipeline, then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about their brand. This gives them incentives to get the news right.
If you pay piecemeal (with money or eyeballs, doesn't matter), then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about how effective the headline is at grabbing your attention. The quality of the article doesn't matter so much because it doesn't affect your buy decision. And what people don't care about, gets shortchanged.
The internet has caused us to move from a subscription model to a piecemeal model, and the quality of news has suffered. But this is not new. A hundred years ago the "yellow press" was also on a piecemeal model. So, more recently, were British tabloids. And they were crap in the same way that the internet news today is crap.
Unless you're either relying on a third party curation that you trust, or are purchasing the brand, quality is going to suffer.
Subtle point, but your assumption (nearly everywhere else in this discussion as well) relies on paying for content before you've consumed it. I haven't heard much discussion on what happens if you remove that assumption.
If you could attach a frictionless transaction to a "Like" or "Kudos", I would be happy to pay $1 a pop or something reasonable for a well researched blog post after I've read it. Maybe not feasible for a wider public, but certainly might have niche acceptance.
If you could attach a frictionless transaction to a "Like" or "Kudos", I would be happy to pay $1 a pop or something reasonable for a well researched blog post after I've read it. Maybe not feasible for a wider public, but certainly might have niche acceptance.
People have pursued such donation based models.
Nobody has succeeded in making substantial money on a per item basis. However NPR manages to do it on a brand-based basis, but their signup rates are something like under 1% of their dedicated listeners. It isn't easy.
Nobody has succeeded in making substantial money on a per item basis. However NPR manages to do it on a brand-based basis, but their signup rates are something like under 1% of their dedicated listeners. It isn't easy.
nwzPaper.com launched a platform to emancipate the journalist and unbundle the content from the legacy aggregated subscription model.
I agree that's the main reason online news is broken, and I started with that reason in my post. I'm proposing that the high quality content part won't be fixed, and see a possible alternative is us and our peers doing more work ourselves to provide the context that matters to us in our jobs.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reading.
A great example of this working are the Kindle editions where I can take a publicly available blog with an RSS feed and yet still feel completely content paying for issues to be sent directly to my Kindle rather than writing scripts or using services to do the same task.
I suggest the next step is crowd sourced expert curation. Some of the most popular posts on Reddit are where an expert enters the comments and lays the article bare for the masses. This is valuable. I'd pay for this.
But, and it's a big one, experts aren't cheap and their time is scarce. They're not going to curate content for free all day like Reddits 12 year olds and the granularity of expertise means you'll never cover everything with a small number of experts.
Two solutions: volume through scale to fund expert curation or find a way to gather and have them work for free. Maybe the research journal system could be used to provide non-financial incentives?
But, and it's a big one, experts aren't cheap and their time is scarce. They're not going to curate content for free all day like Reddits 12 year olds and the granularity of expertise means you'll never cover everything with a small number of experts.
Two solutions: volume through scale to fund expert curation or find a way to gather and have them work for free. Maybe the research journal system could be used to provide non-financial incentives?
I don't know if this is quite what you mean but I've been doing something like this for a couple of years now and am bringing in decent revenues doing it. One example: http://javascriptweekly.com/ .. and an actual issue: http://javascriptweekly.com/archive/96.html .. I have almost 80,000 subscribers to publications like this now and people seem to keep wanting more (so I'm looking for and bringing in expert curators, as you suggest, since I'm close to exhausting my topic range).
How do you get subscribers / traffic to reach 80k? Paid ads?
Initially it was because I run/ran the most popular Ruby blog so the first couple of thousand subscribers came almost exclusively that way - http://peterc.org/blog/2010/306-1120-subscribers-in-2-days-m... - but since then it has been primarily a case of word of mouth and "domino" growth.
For example, many Ruby developers are into Rails. And many of those are into JavaScript. So I branched out into a JavaScript newsletter too and had a few thousand subscribers quickly. Nice (and unsolicited!) words from people like Steve Souders and Paul Irish helped with testimonials and it grew from there.
The next domino was HTML5 which was of interest to both JavaScript and Ruby people. So that one has grown even more quickly. And so on.. :)
For example, many Ruby developers are into Rails. And many of those are into JavaScript. So I branched out into a JavaScript newsletter too and had a few thousand subscribers quickly. Nice (and unsolicited!) words from people like Steve Souders and Paul Irish helped with testimonials and it grew from there.
The next domino was HTML5 which was of interest to both JavaScript and Ruby people. So that one has grown even more quickly. And so on.. :)
The Financial Times has great journalism. It costs me $300+/year. I also love The Economist. It costs $100+/year. They could both probably hike rates without a noticeable attrition is readers.
Luckily for me there is a market for premium financial journalism (the recognisable sources cited poll at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of annual cost). For other types of news, however, my willingness to pay for quality is too small a market. In the space left behind we get people cribbing about news aggregators and paywalls.
Luckily for me there is a market for premium financial journalism (the recognisable sources cited poll at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of annual cost). For other types of news, however, my willingness to pay for quality is too small a market. In the space left behind we get people cribbing about news aggregators and paywalls.
> "news is ... at a fast and furious pace, without a lot of context, and largely filled with what companies want to get out instead of what they don’t want to get out."
High-quality news with high-quality context and interpretation can only really be generated by highly-paid, extremely educated and learned journalists. And it takes time to research and write -- you can't get quality analysis and context 2 hours after an event.
The best example of quality reporting that comes to mind for weekly news is The Economist. Although there is also some excellent long-form journalism in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, etc. And if we're talking about online, for me the whole point of Instapaper is to bookmark these articles to read later.
And I really don't see how crowd-sourced content is the future for news. Most good Wikipedia articles take months if not years to build up. I just don't see how approaching the quality level of The Economist is possible with crowd-sourcing. The kind of people who have the kind of extreme skills and education to write at that level, do it for a living, not for fun on the Internet.
High-quality news with high-quality context and interpretation can only really be generated by highly-paid, extremely educated and learned journalists. And it takes time to research and write -- you can't get quality analysis and context 2 hours after an event.
The best example of quality reporting that comes to mind for weekly news is The Economist. Although there is also some excellent long-form journalism in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, etc. And if we're talking about online, for me the whole point of Instapaper is to bookmark these articles to read later.
And I really don't see how crowd-sourced content is the future for news. Most good Wikipedia articles take months if not years to build up. I just don't see how approaching the quality level of The Economist is possible with crowd-sourcing. The kind of people who have the kind of extreme skills and education to write at that level, do it for a living, not for fun on the Internet.
The Economist has a distinct and significant point of view. If you can assess their material appropriately, it is an excellent weekly.
There are stacks and stacks of excellent periodicals. You've named a few rather "pop" publications; if you want, you could stretch out for The NY Review of Books or Foreign Affairs. Both are characterized by having highly authoritative contributors writing long pieces and great editing.
There are stacks and stacks of excellent periodicals. You've named a few rather "pop" publications; if you want, you could stretch out for The NY Review of Books or Foreign Affairs. Both are characterized by having highly authoritative contributors writing long pieces and great editing.
I'm so sick of the "curation" discussion - if companies like NYT go belly-up, there won't be anything for Huffington Post et al. to "curate". It's inherently derivative.
The clip of NYT's David Carr discussing this in a debate in the documentary Page One is unavailable, but I encourage people to watch it.
Clayton Cubitt originally described professionalism versus amateurism very well, but this will do:
It bothers me that people equate "news" and "journalism".
The clip of NYT's David Carr discussing this in a debate in the documentary Page One is unavailable, but I encourage people to watch it.
Clayton Cubitt originally described professionalism versus amateurism very well, but this will do:
“Can an amateur take a picture as good as a professional?
Sure,” Ms. Eismann said. “Can they do it on demand?
Can they do it again? Can they do it over and over?
Can they do it when a scene isn’t that interesting?”
It bothers me that people equate "news" and "journalism".
This conflates two issues. Online news being broken which I agree with emphatically, and online news discovery being broken and solved by limiting your sharing to a specific group of people which I'm skeptical about since I'm not sure how that's different to what existing giants in that space do.
Online news need a whole new revenue model that can support and encourage quality journalism instead of chasing ad impressions that encourages or perhaps demands the AOL-ification / Demand Media-ization that makes "news" a byproduct of an SEO and link bait game.
Online news need a whole new revenue model that can support and encourage quality journalism instead of chasing ad impressions that encourages or perhaps demands the AOL-ification / Demand Media-ization that makes "news" a byproduct of an SEO and link bait game.
Watch nwzPaper...the revenue innovation is on the way!
It really feels like this person has never gone on Reddit, despite it seemingly being a large competitor. The problems that plagued Digg do not apply as much to Reddit as there is less gaming the algorithms or superusers. Not to say they don't exist, but they are less of a problem. With regards to the inability to 'make it' as a normal user, look at the front page at any time and see how many posts mention their surprise at making it to the front page.
Yeah, I for space reasons I treated them as more similar than they are. Definitely a weakness of the post. My problems with Reddit are more my lack of ability to use it to filter only relevant content for me and strip out, for lack of a better phrase, the "geek content" that's always on its home page. Just seems really hard for a non-tech guy to navigate/get value out of. My concern is not getting content there, but being able to only read the right content for me as a user.
Reddit's mechanism for filtering content is "subreddit" subscriptions. For example if you're only interested in links about movies and music, you subscribe to the subreddits for those subjects. Of course, as Reddit's demographic is geeky, so is its taste in entertainment, so the best that'll get you is geeky movies and music.
The big killer feature that could have helped is user-created subreddits. You could create reddit.com/r/quibb, run it on an invite-only basis, and moderate the submitted content to keep it close to your ideals. Of course, that would only solve the problems of content and membership; it would do nothing to fix Reddit's design.
You're right that Reddit does context poorly. Perhaps you should look at Metafilter as an example of how to add context to aggregated news. Take this post for (an exceptionally long) example: [http://metafilter.com/120387] It has a single main link summarized above the fold, with a large amount of historical context and supplemental links below it. Most posts to Metafilter don't go quite that deep, but almost all provide at least one or two extra links on the subject.
The big killer feature that could have helped is user-created subreddits. You could create reddit.com/r/quibb, run it on an invite-only basis, and moderate the submitted content to keep it close to your ideals. Of course, that would only solve the problems of content and membership; it would do nothing to fix Reddit's design.
You're right that Reddit does context poorly. Perhaps you should look at Metafilter as an example of how to add context to aggregated news. Take this post for (an exceptionally long) example: [http://metafilter.com/120387] It has a single main link summarized above the fold, with a large amount of historical context and supplemental links below it. Most posts to Metafilter don't go quite that deep, but almost all provide at least one or two extra links on the subject.
News content is distinguished from all other content by the nature of its time sensitivity value and geographic relevance to information consumers. nwzPaper has launched a system that can push content in real-time from a global level all of the way down to the local level instantly when a journalist publishes. The UI is intuitive and much better than reddit. It also provides a journalist perspective for added background on the author. Did I mention direct subscription...and it's not rss?
Check it out:
http://nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=4
Check it out:
http://nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=4
The black text on a dark gray background pretty much told me all I needed to know about the site's designer, but when I got to the first gray text on a dark grey background, I bailed.
What, pray tell, is wrong with black text on a white background? Or at the very least, personal tastes being what they are, any significant contrast between text and background?
What, pray tell, is wrong with black text on a white background? Or at the very least, personal tastes being what they are, any significant contrast between text and background?
It should be white text on a blue background. That's what I see. Perhaps it looks different on different computers. I am NOT a designer though, so I won't even pretend to argue the current design is optimal.
> It should be white text on a blue background. That's what I see.
Let's let readers judge for themselves: http://i.imgur.com/6Qtch.png
That's gray.
> Perhaps it looks different on different computers.
Yes -- something that's not true for black text on a white background.
> I am NOT a designer though, so I won't even pretend to argue the current design is optimal.
In that case, a more conventional design might be a better choice -- one in which the contrast between text and background is sufficient to render your pages readable.
I've always favored sites that set themselves apart with their atypical content rather than their atypical color choices.
There are many examples of practical color choices. Everywhere you look, there are sites with reasonable choices. HN, for example.
Or visit the most popular web sites:
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/most-popular-websites
Notice anything? All of them have black text on a white or very light background. No exceptions.
More on this topic:
http://contrastrebellion.com/
Let's let readers judge for themselves: http://i.imgur.com/6Qtch.png
That's gray.
> Perhaps it looks different on different computers.
Yes -- something that's not true for black text on a white background.
> I am NOT a designer though, so I won't even pretend to argue the current design is optimal.
In that case, a more conventional design might be a better choice -- one in which the contrast between text and background is sufficient to render your pages readable.
I've always favored sites that set themselves apart with their atypical content rather than their atypical color choices.
There are many examples of practical color choices. Everywhere you look, there are sites with reasonable choices. HN, for example.
Or visit the most popular web sites:
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/most-popular-websites
Notice anything? All of them have black text on a white or very light background. No exceptions.
http://contrastrebellion.com/
Maybe you got down-voted for being off-topic, but it seems relevant to me. I didn't even finish the first page, let alone put up with such a design as my daily news reading.
> Maybe you got down-voted for being off-topic ...
I regularly see HN posts get downvoted simply for being negative, regardless of the topic. In this case, I think the criticism is both justified and constructive. And I see you agree. :)
> I didn't even finish the first page, let alone put up with such a design as my daily news reading.
I think it's an age thing. There's a certain age at which adorning oneself in dark colors makes one cool, above it all. And designing one's pages according to accepted norms makes one a sell-out. I would be more certain about this were it not for the fact that I am so old that, not only was there no Internet when I was young, there wasn't even FM radio. :)
I regularly see HN posts get downvoted simply for being negative, regardless of the topic. In this case, I think the criticism is both justified and constructive. And I see you agree. :)
> I didn't even finish the first page, let alone put up with such a design as my daily news reading.
I think it's an age thing. There's a certain age at which adorning oneself in dark colors makes one cool, above it all. And designing one's pages according to accepted norms makes one a sell-out. I would be more certain about this were it not for the fact that I am so old that, not only was there no Internet when I was young, there wasn't even FM radio. :)
I agree, this should not be down-voted per se, as its not really an "ad-hominem" atack on the article, given the subject matter. Its a fair critique on readability. "Readability" is central to the discussion for a bunch of reasons:
(1) <cost> The "brain damage factor" is relevant tradeoff to consider, if and when present;
(2) <information efficiency> or lack thereof is a nother key determinant of success; and
(3) <threshold competence> failing to understand (1) & (2) damages credibility ever-so-slightly.
Let us not forget the subject: competition, criteria, and selection of optimal media platforms.
Finally, this article // is a bit // <Exit through the Gift Shop> // with its finish.
(1) <cost> The "brain damage factor" is relevant tradeoff to consider, if and when present;
(2) <information efficiency> or lack thereof is a nother key determinant of success; and
(3) <threshold competence> failing to understand (1) & (2) damages credibility ever-so-slightly.
Let us not forget the subject: competition, criteria, and selection of optimal media platforms.
Finally, this article // is a bit // <Exit through the Gift Shop> // with its finish.
I use the zap colors bookmarklet:
https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
If you agree that online news is broken and want to help fix it, I'd love to hear from you. I'm attempting to fix it by both improving content and improving revenue. It's a fun problem to work on.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[deleted]
nwzPaper.com is fixing it. Setup a journalist profile, publish an article and spread the word.
http://nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=4
http://nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=4
I will assume you are trolling.
For users. This is on topic as nwzPaper just launched the core platform to rebuild the news business. What's the problem, isn't this a place to discuss technology innovation?
Your website is barely usable, half the links don't work or do anything, and there are 3 articles. And you've spammed this article multiple times.
You're hardly rebuilding the news business.
- An information distributor that is neutral on the content message.
Like Google News or any other hundred of news aggregators?
- A platform that empowers the journalist to decide what to write, when to publish and makes the journalist subject only to the market forces of his or her subscribers.
Like a blog?
- A subscriber experience that offers everything in a familiar format, in one place and leaves the choices of who and what to read up to you.
An aggregator again? You haven't solved anything that is a real problem (such as how to pay for quality journalism).
You're hardly rebuilding the news business.
- An information distributor that is neutral on the content message.
Like Google News or any other hundred of news aggregators?
- A platform that empowers the journalist to decide what to write, when to publish and makes the journalist subject only to the market forces of his or her subscribers.
Like a blog?
- A subscriber experience that offers everything in a familiar format, in one place and leaves the choices of who and what to read up to you.
An aggregator again? You haven't solved anything that is a real problem (such as how to pay for quality journalism).
Online news is broken for one fundamental reason: It's currently hard to generate enough revenue from online ads to pay for the creation of high quality content.
This is the only problem that needs fixing and anything else is polishing brass on the Titanic. Fancy news reading systems (Instapaper, Flipboard, Pulse, etc.) are nice because they strip out all the ads. "Wow, look how much nicer it looks! We're totally saving journalism." They aren't. They don't have to pay to produce content, so they can repackage it inexpensively or for free.
The truth is more people are reading the news now than ever before. 16 million people read The New York Times online last month. The print publication peaks at just over 2,000,000 on Sundays.
We don't need better social crowdsourcing of stories. We need more ways to pay for great content.