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This fundamentally misinterprets why a lot of people pay for subscriptions to publications. Yes, not every subscriber to every paper uses that publication regularly. But they aren't paying for units of news to consume. They're funding coverage. americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/paying-for-news/single-page/ noam/1596626221756223488Permalink On twitter.com
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News organizations aren't taking advantage of readers by 'promising them X units of News Product that they will want to consume' and then not doing some activity that is enough to bring them back each month. Readers pay for news because they believe in the mission.Permalink On twitter.com
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A lot of paywall bundlers or micropayment startups miss out on understanding what the relationship is that many readers have with their news orgs. Even more fail to understand how publishers see it, regardless of what the reality of the situation might be...Permalink On twitter.com
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Without that understanding it's very hard to imagine the CEO of Post making the type of deals that he needs to make to deliver on the promises about on-platform news content that his investor has been making.Permalink On twitter.com
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Even if you disagree with publishers' most common position on subscriptions, you're not going to make friends or get contracts by mocking their business model in public. No matter what, the marketplace is complex and can't be broken down to a single factor.On twitter.com
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But yeah, there's a lot of good reading on why people pay for news that it seems like Post's leadership team should be reading: "Subscribers in the US are also more likely to say they want to help fund good journalism (52%...)" digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2020/how-and-why-people-are-paying-for-online-news/Permalink On twitter.com
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The big mistake so many startup types make is assuming that any given unit of content is basically the same. People do not have the same relationship with newsletters as with music as with articles as with etc...Permalink On twitter.com
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Even within a type of content like "News", the relationship readers have with the content and the brand that produces it can be very different. Readers relationship with business publications like WSJ is very different than how they think of articles at NYT or posts on BuzzFeed.Permalink On twitter.com
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The economics of the news biz are their own specialty and even within that there is highly specialized knowledge around B2B publications, 'Improve Your Job Title'-style pubs like FT, and 'Keep up with the Neighbors' style pubs. Very few products can be applied with a broad brush.Permalink On twitter.com
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Ken Doctor stopped writing his amazing Newsonomics column at Nieman Lab to run his own local news startup, but I think even now they still make for useful reading that I highly recommend - niemanlab.org/author/kdoctor/Permalink On twitter.com
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Equally useful, even if I often disagree with it, is The Sell Sider column at adexchanger adexchanger.com/the-sell-sider/Permalink On twitter.com
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API, one of whose articles I linked earlier, is also great reading to understand the news biz - americanpressinstitute.orgPermalink On twitter.com
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I wish more startups would do their research first, launch 2nd. But it often seems like they are entering the world of publishing thinking the only thing they need to have is some miraculous new engineering...Permalink On twitter.com
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There are lots of engineers working on stuff in publishing already. Those in the companies themselves are already often innovating as well as they can, usually at a lot less than what a tech startup pays. But SV doesn't look at them as partners, it looks at them as a content farmPermalink On twitter.com
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Honestly, the publishing business has not been doing well as a vertical basically since Google started butting into how ads work. It would be great if someone came in with a cool useful disruptive idea that actually worked for publishers!Permalink On twitter.com
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But these startups that enter the space without doing the homework, with no advisors from the publishing business, and no idea what is already in the space, thinking they're going to genius it up by doing Medium 2.0? That's not helpful and it isn't going to work.Permalink On twitter.com
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More than one company has already tried SV's 'fake it till you make it' tactics in this exact space. It hasn't gone well. Honestly, they need to stop pulling this trick because it isn't fooling anyone and it turns potential partners off. Chronotope/1596288457051369473Permalink On twitter.com
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You can read more about the problems with trying to launch a micropayments platform here - Chronotope/1596498052579459073Permalink On twitter.com
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