NBC News Digital Bests NYT For 3 Months In Unique Users
https://www.mediaite.com/news/nbc-news-scores-traffic-win-over-new-york-times/
mutters something about paywalls under her breath
@knittingknots2
...and I just made a similar comment on a posted LA Times link, and on a posted Business Insider link. The former wasn't behind a paywall and was on the topic of information silos, while the BI was behind a paywall.
Whoever thought that paywalls were some kind of genius business model need their heads examined.
@ClaraListensprechen4 BI has both you must be registered to read this signups, and Paywall stories.
Paywall comes because people need to pay their people working at the site, and ad money just doesn't cut it any more. News wants to circulate, but bills are real and people want to eat...
@knittingknots2
I've already heard all that multiple times so I'm familiar with the justification for it. It still results in information silos, which is why it's still a bad business model.
A viable business model will keep voters informed (and they'd be ignorant otherwise and you see for yourself how that works out) and the working people get to eat too. Once upon a time, they used to do that, so the thing that changed was the business model.
@ClaraListensprechen4 For profit news magazines, whether online or off, don't have the means nor the fiscal obligation to prevent information silos. All they can do is offer their stuff. Yeah, the model sucks, but unless news sites become public utilities, this is the reality in a country that functions as a wealth extraction machine. Internet ads are mostly dominated by Google and similar, the old print ads died, web ads don't return much, nobody's turning news services into public utils.
@knittingknots2
...therefore even by your explanation, the press is in need of a different business model.
The old saw about how ad money just doesn't cut it any more, just doesn't cut it anymore. And until some financial wizard shows themselves to be actual financial wizards, we're stuck with an uninformed voting public stuck in various silos and the only thing the press will predictably do is wring their hands over the shitty governements that keep getting voted in.
If it's in the press' interest to preserve good government, it's therefore in the press' interest to keep the entire voting public informed. And up to date.
