Times-Picayune to reduce to 3 per week

[hn333]

I wish all newspapers would go way. Not needed anymore.

[Kumabjorn]

Then where would we get unbiased investigative reporting?

[stonetools]

There are sources of original investigative journalism online.


The Huffington Post (in parts).
Byliner.
The Atavist.


For the most part, though, the best investigative journalism comes from print, then TV.

The problem is , we like getting news, but we have been trained not to pay for it. And supplying Accurate , informative news doesn't come cheap.
Maybe the solution may be the BBC option- a government provided news channel -news as a public utility. I'm not a fan of that solution, for many reasons. But there are many things in life that I am not a fan of. You learn to live it.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Then where would we get unbiased investigative reporting?

News Corp

All hail the mighty Rupert

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Bottom line: I absolutely refuse to pay for my news!

I don't pay for my news, online or print, because I have zero confidence that paid news sources offer better quality. Take the print papers in my city: the free dailies offer most of the stories of the paid dailies. The big difference is that the paid papers are fatter: advertiser driven supplements, single-sided editorials, and minor updates to the prior days' news. Why would I pay to be subject to more advertising, to have someone tell me what my opinion is, or waste my time sifting through recaps of stories I read a day or two earlier?

That being said, I'll take free print over free online news any day.

[SeaKing]

:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
From the link above:

If any of the online news sources I read erect a paid wall, I'll quite reading them and find another.

Bottom line: I absolutely refuse to pay for my news!

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

Hmmm, monkeys are cheap. Ergo, I must also be a monkey. Fully agreed with the above.

On line, besides gambling and heavy sex only business news(i.e. WSJ) and the best point spreads are currently successful at having customers pay the full freight.

Over time with pay-walls, there will be a severe shake out of the "good" free news blogs because they get their news from the big guys who will start suing them. All this aggregation is only a passing trend. A few essentially free news blogs with very heavy advertising embedded in the pages so as to avoid ad blocking will emerge.

I believe the last paid staff news sources to be more or less totally free on line will be the Television Broadcast Stations.

The above doesn't preclude a new model being developed or the old models being tweaked into new forms.

[Rob Lister]

I don't currently subscribe to any news service but that's mostly because there is no single news service I read thoroughly or regularly enough to make it worthwhile.

I'm not idealistically against paywalls--they deserve to get paid for what they do--but I'm not going to subscribe to many-multiple services, which is what I'd have to do to get the news the way I want.

If someone comes up with a paywall business model that actually fits my consumption profile, I'd probably subscribe to it.

A bundling service perhaps. If someone were to provide a service that allowed me full access 10 or 20 new sources of my choice at a reasonable price, I pull out my credit card.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

I don't currently subscribe to any news service but that's mostly because there is no single news service I read thoroughly or regularly enough to make it worthwhile.

I'm not idealistically against paywalls--they deserve to get paid for what they do--but I'm not going to subscribe to many-multiple services, which is what I'd have to do to get the news the way I want.

If someone comes up with a paywall business model that actually fits my consumption profile, I'd probably subscribe to it.

A bundling service perhaps. If someone were to provide a service that allowed me full access 10 or 20 new sources of my choice at a reasonable price, I pull out my credit card.

The tide is going out on the News Print Business. Sure there will be people that want to subscribe to some of the big print papers like they used to be, but not enough to support those giant newsrooms. The print dailies will have to decrease in size and scope as well as go on line, and find free or cheap bloggers, or try to find generous Billionaires willing to carry the load (the constant losses.)
We will have some smaller (2 or 3 times a week) print locals and regionals.

[Kumabjorn]

When these papers reduce publishing to a few days a week, how does local businesses handle their need to reach consumers locally?

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

When these papers reduce publishing to a few days a week, how does local businesses handle their need to reach consumers locally?

Mail outs, billboards, boothes at local events, and more than anything else - a presence on this new fangled internet thingy. You might have heard about that.

People say (if you kin believe it) thet you kin even buy books on thet there internet and read em on some mo sheen without leavin yer house.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

I don't currently subscribe to any news service but that's mostly because there is no single news service I read thoroughly or regularly enough to make it worthwhile.

I'm not idealistically against paywalls--they deserve to get paid for what they do--but I'm not going to subscribe to many-multiple services, which is what I'd have to do to get the news the way I want.

If someone comes up with a paywall business model that actually fits my consumption profile, I'd probably subscribe to it.

A bundling service perhaps. If someone were to provide a service that allowed me full access 10 or 20 new sources of my choice at a reasonable price, I pull out my credit card.

Check out pressdisplay.com, who do exactly that, a single fee to access all the newspapers they cover. They have iOS and Android apps as well.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Mail outs, billboards, boothes at local events, and more than anything else - a presence on this new fangled internet thingy. You might have heard about that.

People say (if you kin believe it) thet you kin even buy books on thet there internet and read em on some mo sheen without leavin yer house.

They simply don't seem as efficient in reaching your target customer. It has to be especially difficult on reaching your local targets through the internet.

The problem with news aggregation sites like Huffington Post is that aside from the occasional original opinion piece everything there comes from an actual newspaper or magazine source. Sometimes all HuffPo provides is a link to the real source. Those original sources require actual investigative journalists to find the story and write the article. That requires professionals that quite naturally expect to be paid for their work.

There is also the matter of local new stories that will likely remain uncovered if local city newspapers disappear. Twenty minutes of local television news is no substitute, especially given how local television news tends to only cover the sensational (crime) or the feel good trivial (cute pet stories).

Unpaid bloggers are no substitute in terms of gathering all the facts, analyzing those facts in at least a somewhat impartial manner, and presenting it all in a clear manner. Of course, at least in the US, people have moved away from wanting news coverage, and toward echo chambers that feed them back distortions or outright lies that leave them satisfied that they are getting unbiased news that in actual fact just conforms to their bias.

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” George Orwell

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” George Orwell

That's a great quote!

[tubemonkey]

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