"That was just a beautiful lineup of great writers"
December 27, 2015 6:08 PM Subscribe
Newsweek takes a look at the death of several pop culture sites in 2015. Spearheaded by film oriented Pitchfork spin-off Dissolve (previously), ESPN-owned and Bill Simmons-created sports and pop-culture Grantland (also previously), this year was particularly grim for new media, as the same problems of traditional media - declining ad revenue and failure to compete with sensationalism (or in this case, clickbait) and slow growth - put a shade on what was until very recently considered the future of journalism.
Besides Grantland and The Dissolve (the latter of which I rarely visited, maybe twice, I think), most of the list are sites I'd never even heard of. In other news, the majority of all new businesses (including brick-and-mortar places) fail within a few years.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:27 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:27 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm still upset about The Dissolve and always will be. It was just the best.
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 6:39 PM on December 27, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 6:39 PM on December 27, 2015 [7 favorites]
Where oh where is fuckedcompany.com when you need it?
posted by Melismata at 6:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 6:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [7 favorites]
I still haven't really gotten over the loss of suck.com, so I can't really get worked up over these newcomers.
posted by signal at 7:04 PM on December 27, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by signal at 7:04 PM on December 27, 2015 [13 favorites]
We've been desperately trying to monetize this shit for twenty years but we still haven't figured out the big one, micro transactions. I blame Visa and MasterCard who have no real reason to innovate and keep fixed transaction costs high. There's the other side of the coin where a bunch of big sites didn't just get together and establish a micro transaction network.
Seriously, you get CPM rates of $3? One cent a god damned page will be triple that. It would be sustainable! We just need some smart asshole to figure out how to make it work. Apple, I'm looking in your direction.
posted by Talez at 7:14 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
Seriously, you get CPM rates of $3? One cent a god damned page will be triple that. It would be sustainable! We just need some smart asshole to figure out how to make it work. Apple, I'm looking in your direction.
posted by Talez at 7:14 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
Because at this point, you might as well have J-school courses teaching students how to embed John Oliver clips.
As a J-school graduate, I can say this is not much worse than what they're currently doing. Poor quality is a leading indicator of the "very few readers" problem, not a trailing one.
Gee, J-schools should just lower their standards? Hah! Is there a standard beneath "floor?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:25 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
As a J-school graduate, I can say this is not much worse than what they're currently doing. Poor quality is a leading indicator of the "very few readers" problem, not a trailing one.
Gee, J-schools should just lower their standards? Hah! Is there a standard beneath "floor?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:25 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
We've been desperately trying to monetize this shit for twenty years but we still haven't figured out the big one, micro transactions.
And yet, Apple and Google both allow entire apps and in-app purchases to go for as low as .99 cents, which can be used to purchase packages of virtual currency to allow for microtransactions. This is how Supercell literally makes tens of millions of dollars a day in the game space.
It ain't VISA and MasterCard. It's dumb content providers that lack the imagination to move beyond the hundreds-year-old business model of selling display ads, because goddamnit, they're Creatives with a capital C and shouldn't have to think about uninteresting stuff like economics and business, which are for douchey bros that OMG never read anything by David Foster Wallace...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:37 PM on December 27, 2015 [5 favorites]
And yet, Apple and Google both allow entire apps and in-app purchases to go for as low as .99 cents, which can be used to purchase packages of virtual currency to allow for microtransactions. This is how Supercell literally makes tens of millions of dollars a day in the game space.
It ain't VISA and MasterCard. It's dumb content providers that lack the imagination to move beyond the hundreds-year-old business model of selling display ads, because goddamnit, they're Creatives with a capital C and shouldn't have to think about uninteresting stuff like economics and business, which are for douchey bros that OMG never read anything by David Foster Wallace...
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:37 PM on December 27, 2015 [5 favorites]
It ain't VISA and MasterCard. It's dumb content providers that lack the imagination to move beyond the hundreds-year-old business model of selling display ads, because goddamnit, they're Creatives with a capital C and shouldn't have to think about uninteresting stuff like economics and business, which are for douchey bros that OMG never read anything by David Foster Wallace...
It kind of is though. Hypertext jumping around all over the web doesn't lend itself to charging up a site everywhere with micro transaction floozles every time you go visit a new site. If you could charge up $20 to a single source, subscribe to a site with a single click on the first page you visit, give out 1c a page to browse it ad free, payment processor keeps 5%, 3% to Visa/MC, 2% for administration and 95% goes to the publisher. Every month it recharges an amount to bring your account back up to $20. I could see that gaining traction. Maybe Amazon should do it? They've already got their hands halfway into that cookie jar anyway.
posted by Talez at 7:52 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
It kind of is though. Hypertext jumping around all over the web doesn't lend itself to charging up a site everywhere with micro transaction floozles every time you go visit a new site. If you could charge up $20 to a single source, subscribe to a site with a single click on the first page you visit, give out 1c a page to browse it ad free, payment processor keeps 5%, 3% to Visa/MC, 2% for administration and 95% goes to the publisher. Every month it recharges an amount to bring your account back up to $20. I could see that gaining traction. Maybe Amazon should do it? They've already got their hands halfway into that cookie jar anyway.
posted by Talez at 7:52 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
most of the list are sites I'd never even heard of.
Well, that's you! I've heard of - and frequented daily, in some cases - most of these sites/services that shuttered.
The Dissolve, Grantland, Wondering Sound, Rdio, This Is My Jam, Grooveshark, Cokemachineglow.
It's been a rough fucking year for places I enjoy visiting on the net. The scariest thing about it is that, as the article mentions, many of these were successful at what they set out to do - quality content that matters, a top-notch experience, the best destination for their particular niche. And it just didn't matter. I'd almost feel better if they just failed utterly. Instead it reads like a list of pop culture sites that are unfailingly smart, incisive, and not interested in the easy clickbait, hype cycles, and lowest common denominator pageview grabs.
posted by naju at 7:52 PM on December 27, 2015 [16 favorites]
Well, that's you! I've heard of - and frequented daily, in some cases - most of these sites/services that shuttered.
The Dissolve, Grantland, Wondering Sound, Rdio, This Is My Jam, Grooveshark, Cokemachineglow.
It's been a rough fucking year for places I enjoy visiting on the net. The scariest thing about it is that, as the article mentions, many of these were successful at what they set out to do - quality content that matters, a top-notch experience, the best destination for their particular niche. And it just didn't matter. I'd almost feel better if they just failed utterly. Instead it reads like a list of pop culture sites that are unfailingly smart, incisive, and not interested in the easy clickbait, hype cycles, and lowest common denominator pageview grabs.
posted by naju at 7:52 PM on December 27, 2015 [16 favorites]
I am reluctant to pay for subscriptions to individual sites, but I would gladly pay a regular subscription to a kind of Spotify-for-writing-content where I pay a set amount for months and get xx articles to read across the participating providers as I see fit. What annoys me is that all the content providers want you to subscribe to them and only to them-- even though that model is rooted in the physical world.
posted by frumiousb at 7:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by frumiousb at 7:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
I would be into any innovative subscription models that are put on the table. Something of a Humble Bundle for good independent pop culture journalism? Sign me up.
posted by naju at 7:58 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by naju at 7:58 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
People have been praying to the false idol of micropayments for literally 20 years and they still don't work. They don't work because users don't like them, end of story.
I don't think Clay Shirky's right about everything thing, but I do think he's right about this, and he's been right for 12 years at least. Here's a vintage 2009 version of his argument, but to cut to the nut graf:
posted by Diablevert at 7:59 PM on December 27, 2015 [8 favorites]
I don't think Clay Shirky's right about everything thing, but I do think he's right about this, and he's been right for 12 years at least. Here's a vintage 2009 version of his argument, but to cut to the nut graf:
Nickel-and-dimeing us for access to content made less useful by those very restrictions simply isn’t appealing [to users]. Newspapers can’t entice us into small payment systems, because we care too much about our conversation with one another, and they can’t force us into such systems, because [internet competitors] all understand that not only is a news cartel unworkable, but that if one existed, their competitive advantage would be in attacking it rather than defending it.An infinite supply of free alternative content is always only a click away. Because of this reality, you will only pay for stuff on the internet out of pity or charity or do-gooder-ism. In the entire history of humanity, the amount of pity and charity and do-gooderism in the world has never been enough to solve the chronic problems which elicit them.
posted by Diablevert at 7:59 PM on December 27, 2015 [8 favorites]
...Creatives with a capital C and shouldn't have to think about uninteresting stuff like economics and business, which are for douchey bros that OMG never read anything by David Foster Wallace...
You are behind more recent Journalistic Brostudies which have determined that David Foster Wallace is beloved of the litbro, as the Bernie Sanders fandom is composed of Berniebros and computer programming is an activity undertaken by the brogrammer.
It is essential that we maintain journalist funding that they may complete their Brotaxonomy (including, of course, confirming the obvious non-existence of the journobro) and submit the full list to John Oliver or his successor for destruction, demolition, and evisceration, to be celebrated widely with embedded clips.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:05 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
You are behind more recent Journalistic Brostudies which have determined that David Foster Wallace is beloved of the litbro, as the Bernie Sanders fandom is composed of Berniebros and computer programming is an activity undertaken by the brogrammer.
It is essential that we maintain journalist funding that they may complete their Brotaxonomy (including, of course, confirming the obvious non-existence of the journobro) and submit the full list to John Oliver or his successor for destruction, demolition, and evisceration, to be celebrated widely with embedded clips.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:05 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
.
On the payments front - it's rough out there - I pay for MF and a few podcasts, but $40-$60/yr seems to be the minimum price of entry, trending as high as $200 for NYT web. And it's like: I've live you, but I really only $20 - $30 /yr love most places and podcasts. And even though that's still an order of magnitude more money than they'd get from straight ad revenue, there's no jar to put the tip in.
posted by wotsac at 8:09 PM on December 27, 2015
On the payments front - it's rough out there - I pay for MF and a few podcasts, but $40-$60/yr seems to be the minimum price of entry, trending as high as $200 for NYT web. And it's like: I've live you, but I really only $20 - $30 /yr love most places and podcasts. And even though that's still an order of magnitude more money than they'd get from straight ad revenue, there's no jar to put the tip in.
posted by wotsac at 8:09 PM on December 27, 2015
Re: charity. I'd be paying for entirely selfish reasons - I want the sites I like to not go away. I'm sure most people were averse to the idea of donating $$ to Metafilter until they learned that the site was barely hanging on by a thread. I donate because I want this site to continue, because I like it here. Me, me, me.
Users are averse to paying for any content on the net. But they will discover the hard way that this system simply isn't sustainable. We've ended up in the darkest timeline, where the worst content farms are rewarded, and the actual substantive content can't survive. It will only get worse. Either we change perceptions and suggest that subscriptions (or other ideas - I don't know) are in your naked best interest. Or, I'm not sure we want to see what the internet landscape in 2025 will look like.
posted by naju at 8:09 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
Users are averse to paying for any content on the net. But they will discover the hard way that this system simply isn't sustainable. We've ended up in the darkest timeline, where the worst content farms are rewarded, and the actual substantive content can't survive. It will only get worse. Either we change perceptions and suggest that subscriptions (or other ideas - I don't know) are in your naked best interest. Or, I'm not sure we want to see what the internet landscape in 2025 will look like.
posted by naju at 8:09 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
because goddamnit, they're Creatives with a capital C and shouldn't have to think about uninteresting stuff like economics and business, which are for douchey bros that OMG never read anything by David Foster Wallace...
Nothing personal, but this kind of condescension is exactly why creatives think suits are douchey.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:10 PM on December 27, 2015 [17 favorites]
Nothing personal, but this kind of condescension is exactly why creatives think suits are douchey.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:10 PM on December 27, 2015 [17 favorites]
BATTLE OF THE ARCHETYPES
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:15 PM on December 27, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:15 PM on December 27, 2015 [8 favorites]
I'm down with the micropayments idea, especially if I can use a single system across a number of sites. The question becomes pricing (sure, but how much would I pay?).
The next question becomes social justice and opportunity -- sure, *I* can pay, at least a little something, but can that 13 year old in a low-income family? There's always been some inequality of access to information (the rich family could afford the set of encyclopedias and newspaper delivery), so this criticism isn't unique to the current proposal, but it would be great to develop a pricing system that wasn't regressive.
posted by salvia at 8:24 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
The next question becomes social justice and opportunity -- sure, *I* can pay, at least a little something, but can that 13 year old in a low-income family? There's always been some inequality of access to information (the rich family could afford the set of encyclopedias and newspaper delivery), so this criticism isn't unique to the current proposal, but it would be great to develop a pricing system that wasn't regressive.
posted by salvia at 8:24 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm not picturing closed paywalls. In my head, everyone gets access to the same basic stuff, with premium users getting access to exclusive pieces, some longform content that may be more niche, exclusive mixes, song or movie trailer premieres, interviews, the mobile app with "First Listen" album streaming, podcasts, or whatever.
posted by naju at 8:44 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by naju at 8:44 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
naju: Autostraddle has a Plus program that's pretty much what you're envisioning, and it's been a godsend especially since they're not very well-served by advertising (they've found that a lot of people are averse to advertising on a site by and about queer women) nor do they have rich husbands.
salvia: To add on to your social justice comment - also consider foreign exchange. Right now a ton of countries' currencies are weak against the US dollar, and earning power is middling. I've had to cancel a ton of subscriptions because it became way too expensive in Malaysian Ringgit and I wasn't earning enough (or, well, anything) to be able to afford them. US$10 is about RM$40, which is partway through the price for a good book. And yet payment processors don't make it easy for non-Malaysians to donate - PayPal is a relatively recent addition, and Malaysia seems to be one of those countries that get blacklisted as "fraud".
posted by divabat at 8:49 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
salvia: To add on to your social justice comment - also consider foreign exchange. Right now a ton of countries' currencies are weak against the US dollar, and earning power is middling. I've had to cancel a ton of subscriptions because it became way too expensive in Malaysian Ringgit and I wasn't earning enough (or, well, anything) to be able to afford them. US$10 is about RM$40, which is partway through the price for a good book. And yet payment processors don't make it easy for non-Malaysians to donate - PayPal is a relatively recent addition, and Malaysia seems to be one of those countries that get blacklisted as "fraud".
posted by divabat at 8:49 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
naju,
But the problem with that, as noted above, is that "[a]n infinite supply of free alternative content is always only a click away." Why would a user pay for your premium access when there will be a million sites giving content like that away for free? You'd just harm your writers or musicians by losing user attention, because no one wants to pay for anything and they can get it elsewhere for free.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:49 PM on December 27, 2015
But the problem with that, as noted above, is that "[a]n infinite supply of free alternative content is always only a click away." Why would a user pay for your premium access when there will be a million sites giving content like that away for free? You'd just harm your writers or musicians by losing user attention, because no one wants to pay for anything and they can get it elsewhere for free.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:49 PM on December 27, 2015
But they will discover the hard way that this system simply isn't sustainable. We've ended up in the darkest timeline, where the worst content farms are rewarded, and the actual substantive content can't survive.
What, precisely, is unsustainable about that? There's always been a surplus of people willing to create art. To create work that is meaningful to others is rewarding in itself. Fame succors the ego better than money, arguably.
I mean, really, if Matt Haughey went all Phineas Gage on us tomorrow and shut down the site in a fit of rage, you really think you wouldn't have found an alternative source of articles and chit-chat somewhere on this web of ours in about 2 minutes? There'd be a bunch of mourning, angry blog post, perhaps an abortive Kickstarter, a bunch of people would make up lists with the Twitter usernames of former Mefites....and life would move on.
Charity is a fine an noble thing, and the desire to support an institution whose values and product you admire is a valuable resource which can indeed be tapped. Here and there. For some stuff. Maybe you kick in $20 to MeFi and $50 to NPR and $100 to the opera. But whatever it is you are willing to shell out of pocket for, would you really be willing to donate the production cost per user for that thing? For all the things you currently consume? Personally I've probably looked at a 1,000 websites this month, I'd bet. Even at a nickle per --- site, not page --- that's a lot more dough than I'd be willing to pay per month for content, especially for some of those sites. If there existed some sort of ironclad paywall for every site on the internet, I would probably simply go to fewer sites. If some sites tried to set up ironclad paywalls, but many other, slightly lesser-quality sites existed which were free, I would use the free sites. This is the crux. Content producers have a stick to beat themselves with and no carrot but guilt.
posted by Diablevert at 8:53 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
What, precisely, is unsustainable about that? There's always been a surplus of people willing to create art. To create work that is meaningful to others is rewarding in itself. Fame succors the ego better than money, arguably.
I mean, really, if Matt Haughey went all Phineas Gage on us tomorrow and shut down the site in a fit of rage, you really think you wouldn't have found an alternative source of articles and chit-chat somewhere on this web of ours in about 2 minutes? There'd be a bunch of mourning, angry blog post, perhaps an abortive Kickstarter, a bunch of people would make up lists with the Twitter usernames of former Mefites....and life would move on.
Charity is a fine an noble thing, and the desire to support an institution whose values and product you admire is a valuable resource which can indeed be tapped. Here and there. For some stuff. Maybe you kick in $20 to MeFi and $50 to NPR and $100 to the opera. But whatever it is you are willing to shell out of pocket for, would you really be willing to donate the production cost per user for that thing? For all the things you currently consume? Personally I've probably looked at a 1,000 websites this month, I'd bet. Even at a nickle per --- site, not page --- that's a lot more dough than I'd be willing to pay per month for content, especially for some of those sites. If there existed some sort of ironclad paywall for every site on the internet, I would probably simply go to fewer sites. If some sites tried to set up ironclad paywalls, but many other, slightly lesser-quality sites existed which were free, I would use the free sites. This is the crux. Content producers have a stick to beat themselves with and no carrot but guilt.
posted by Diablevert at 8:53 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
But the problem with that, as noted above, is that "[a]n infinite supply of free alternative content is always only a click away." Why would a user pay for your premium access when there will be a million sites giving content like that away for free? You'd just harm your writers or musicians by losing user attention, because no one wants to pay for anything and they can get it elsewhere for free.
If you bundle a bunch of like-minded sites together in it, at some point it ends up being an enticing value-added proposition. Or if it doesn't - if truly, users will never, ever pay for any content - then there is nothing to be done. But I'm not quite that cynical.
posted by naju at 8:53 PM on December 27, 2015
If you bundle a bunch of like-minded sites together in it, at some point it ends up being an enticing value-added proposition. Or if it doesn't - if truly, users will never, ever pay for any content - then there is nothing to be done. But I'm not quite that cynical.
posted by naju at 8:53 PM on December 27, 2015
And meanwhile, people are paying $10-a-bar for faux-artisanal remelted chocolate.
posted by naju at 8:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by naju at 8:56 PM on December 27, 2015 [5 favorites]
It's not cynicism, it's economics.
What you're proposing is the creation of some kind of content cartel. Cartels are very difficult to maintain in a market like the Internet for the reasons given: competitors will arise that charge less or nothing, and your cartel will not be able to sustain itself.
Pop culture criticism seems particularly prone to this since the barrier to entry is so low and the supply is so enormous.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:59 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
What you're proposing is the creation of some kind of content cartel. Cartels are very difficult to maintain in a market like the Internet for the reasons given: competitors will arise that charge less or nothing, and your cartel will not be able to sustain itself.
Pop culture criticism seems particularly prone to this since the barrier to entry is so low and the supply is so enormous.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:59 PM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
You've turned it into an economic truism because you don't see the value in the high-quality stuff. That's you. But a few of us have become fans of these sites because they consistently offer something special. I see a wide gulf between the top-tier content and the bottom-feeding content. Sites like these improve my life significantly enough that I'm willing to pay for them. Not pay a lot, mind you. But... pay. (And I think there are more people like me than you realize.)
posted by naju at 9:12 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by naju at 9:12 PM on December 27, 2015
I bet Grantland thought so too.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:24 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 9:24 PM on December 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
And it would be nice if you didn't jump to the "we highbrows..." attacks. I'm not some listicle-obsessed moron, there are quality sites I enjoy too. I just think it's inevitable that attempts at doing what you're suggesting will fail.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:27 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by Sangermaine at 9:27 PM on December 27, 2015
Do you have an alternative solution for this? Or are you honestly just in "who cares?" mode?
posted by naju at 9:28 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by naju at 9:28 PM on December 27, 2015
It bugs me that I can't just throw in a dime or a dollar for an article I loved. That I would have to go to the hassle of typing in my address and credit card number or give them my paypal, or subscribe to a website that I'll never likely visit again. I'm not saying this would solve the problem of funding good independent journalism, but in any scenario I can think of, quick easy payments seem like a necessary first step. If something like that existed, without generating a whole new crazy economy like Bitcoin, I'd be curious how well a voluntary system would work.
"Like this article? Click here to send 50 cents from your InstaWallet to joeswebsite.com!"
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:41 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
"Like this article? Click here to send 50 cents from your InstaWallet to joeswebsite.com!"
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:41 PM on December 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
Slarty Bartfast: There are a bunch of sites that let you do that: ChangeTip, Flattr, and Reddcoin.
Also have people forgotten about the Good Web Bundle already?
posted by divabat at 9:51 PM on December 27, 2015
Also have people forgotten about the Good Web Bundle already?
posted by divabat at 9:51 PM on December 27, 2015
ChangeTip is mostly for charitable organizations but I've never used Flattr or Reddcoin, do they necessitate that the receiving website/writer be registered with them? Do they add a "donate here" button to the web page? I read through those two and I'm not really getting how they work. (Sorry I'm new to this whole internet thing)
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:07 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:07 PM on December 27, 2015
I'm a proponent of the micropayment cartel (I prefer "alliance") sort of thing but Shirky is right that the nature of the news business sort of works against that. Somebody really has to enforce non-idiotic pricing - i.e. low fees for long-term access and minimal price discrimination no matter how "premium" you think you are - or it will be simply awful. But the way the industry is everybody is trained to try to scoop - which is to say undercut - each other.
posted by atoxyl at 10:40 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by atoxyl at 10:40 PM on December 27, 2015
As a pure consumer (ie, not in any tech or online capacity at all), this has always felt like a forced choice thing on the part of the content provider. It's either free with ads or has a kind of high subscription rate with/without ads and lives or dies on one of those models. I mean, there's hybrids and every kind of one-off oddity out there, but for the "middle" type of site in the OP, it honestly seems like the business model gets stuck in a certain direction where it has to either have math that works for subs or math that works for page views. And then when it doesn't.......the plug gets pulled. I can't understand why low-cost annual subs plus moderate ads aren't a smart answer here. I get the complexity of micropayments per post (and honestly it would drive me insane), but $5 a year for a blog I read regularly, via Patreon or whatever? I pay small amounts now for This Modern World, for example, and it feels painless.
posted by Vcholerae at 10:47 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by Vcholerae at 10:47 PM on December 27, 2015
Aw shit Cokemachineglow? Music writing is lost. :(
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:28 PM on December 27, 2015
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:28 PM on December 27, 2015
I am reluctant to pay for subscriptions to individual sites, but I would gladly pay a regular subscription to a kind of Spotify-for-writing-content where I pay a set amount for months and get xx articles to read across the participating providers as I see fit.
Oh, I like this idea! I think it would be cool if there was a baseline number of articles, and then you could have the option to to pay like $5 for 10 extra articles if you run out in a month. (Totally making up random numbers.)
Or, maybe you could pay $20 to get "reading credit" that you could then use at any of the bundled sites, and then when you run out of credit, you could get more credits. This wouldn't be a month to month thing, although you would probably want to set it up so that you get "more bang for your buck" if you buy a larger number of reading credits at one time.
Personally, I would be happier with something like the latter option, since I go through phases where I read a bunch of long form articles, and then other times when I just don't read any, so I would have a harder time rationalizing a month to month thing. Actually, these two ideas aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Of course, there are a million reasons why this wouldn't work. Maybe one of the biggest hurdles is that to make it worth it, you'd have to get enough decent sites to draw people in.
posted by litera scripta manet at 11:54 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh, I like this idea! I think it would be cool if there was a baseline number of articles, and then you could have the option to to pay like $5 for 10 extra articles if you run out in a month. (Totally making up random numbers.)
Or, maybe you could pay $20 to get "reading credit" that you could then use at any of the bundled sites, and then when you run out of credit, you could get more credits. This wouldn't be a month to month thing, although you would probably want to set it up so that you get "more bang for your buck" if you buy a larger number of reading credits at one time.
Personally, I would be happier with something like the latter option, since I go through phases where I read a bunch of long form articles, and then other times when I just don't read any, so I would have a harder time rationalizing a month to month thing. Actually, these two ideas aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Of course, there are a million reasons why this wouldn't work. Maybe one of the biggest hurdles is that to make it worth it, you'd have to get enough decent sites to draw people in.
posted by litera scripta manet at 11:54 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
If I went to a thing and it told me "hey guy, here's a sample so you can tell our stuff is cool, and here's a functioning credit card input box right on the screen so you can tell there's no ridiculous bullshit form with PayPal redirects and god knows what" then I would probably be subscribing to a larger number of interwebs. Just use Stripe's card dialog or rip it off. Make it trivial and obvious. I pay for magazines at 7-Eleven, sure I'll give you some money for your fascinating vaguely radical pop culture commentary if it gives me interesting stuff to talk about at dinner parties. Let me pay you, please, just don't make the payment process boring and stupid. Hire some consultant who knows about making stuff nice.
posted by mbrock at 12:26 AM on December 28, 2015
posted by mbrock at 12:26 AM on December 28, 2015
I decided to play Skyrim again. Went to the Nexus to add some new mods. Had an ad blocker running so the site asked me for a one time payment of $2. In exchange for the two bucks, the Nexus agreed to no longer show ads or guilt trips as long as I was logged in. Since it was a one time thing and because I've used them off and on for years, I paid up.
Maybe that's the long term solution for a lot of sites. 2 bucks covers quite a few otherwise blocked ads. I noticed the Toast doing something similar with their dollar (or more) tips on articles. Though would be nice for them to be clear on whether or not the author gets part of it.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:38 AM on December 28, 2015
Maybe that's the long term solution for a lot of sites. 2 bucks covers quite a few otherwise blocked ads. I noticed the Toast doing something similar with their dollar (or more) tips on articles. Though would be nice for them to be clear on whether or not the author gets part of it.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:38 AM on December 28, 2015
It's interesting to see the divide between people who are happy with subscriptions (but not micropayments) and people who are happy with micropayments (but not subscriptions). I am way, way in the latter camp, and anyone who says it can't work should look at F2P games these days. But in the particular case of writing online I think you'd have to be very careful about designing the system the right way, and probably not everybody would agree with me about what that means.
posted by atoxyl at 1:45 AM on December 28, 2015
posted by atoxyl at 1:45 AM on December 28, 2015
One other problem, which has been touched on in this thread, is how do we make this work for poor people (like me.) In the UK, there are people who have to choose between putting food on the table and heating their home; there are people using food banks as they don't have enough money for food; there are people who have had their social security sanctioned to meet the governments target of x% of people sanctioned per month because the government is a bunch of rich tory toffs who have never had to worry about money in their life to save the taxpayer money. What about these people? If you haven't got the money for food and heating you are not going to want to pay for website access.
Oh wait: you don't see the value in the high-quality stuff. That's you. But a few of us have become fans of these sites because they consistently offer something special.
I understand now - these poor people aren't going to want to read highbrow stuff because they are obviously poor and stupid. So fuck them, right? If they were smart they wouldn't be poor! The internet should only be accessible to those who are smart and have enough surplus cash to fund it.
Okay I am being a little facetious, but you can see my point, how do we make sure it works for everybody?
posted by marienbad at 5:31 AM on December 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Oh wait: you don't see the value in the high-quality stuff. That's you. But a few of us have become fans of these sites because they consistently offer something special.
I understand now - these poor people aren't going to want to read highbrow stuff because they are obviously poor and stupid. So fuck them, right? If they were smart they wouldn't be poor! The internet should only be accessible to those who are smart and have enough surplus cash to fund it.
Okay I am being a little facetious, but you can see my point, how do we make sure it works for everybody?
posted by marienbad at 5:31 AM on December 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Well, what Grantland did was get me reading an ESPN site. And what closing Grantland did was not to make me move to reading ESPN's main site, it made me stop reading ESPN's site. ESPN may still have made the right decision if my eyeballs weren't worth paying Simmons and Co. what they were paying, but it was a brand expansion at a time that ESPN desperately needed it, and now it's gone.
The issue: ESPN made bank on being the source for sports. When they started buying rights to big events, that made them even more important to the sports fan. For the longest time, the single most expensive bundle a cable company bought was the ESPN bundle, which is why Disney wanted them -- they bolted on the third most expensive (the Disney bundle) and made bank.
The problem now is twofold. 1) Cable as we know it is dying, as people go to the true endpoint of pay per view -- paying for only what they want, or paying for archives. You don't need to pay the HBO tax to watch Game of Thrones, you can just get Game of Thrones. 2) ESPN is losing more and more coverage because Fox/Sky are paying truly enormous amounts of money for the rights.
So, you have a sports channel with less and less sports *and* a population not willing to pay for "sports" but willing to pay for "Cubs games, Blues Hockey, and Curling." The outfits willing to provide that? They're getting that money, not ESPN, which you only get in a bundle with all the other Disney and ABC networks, and which likely doesn't even show many Cubs Games, Blues Games, or Curling. You're paying for 100% of the TV time, but you only want maybe 2% of it.
That model is dying hard, but ESPN, without imagination, has decided to focus on their "core product,"buggy whips, cable television, and to reduce cost there, ESPN has redoubled on their "No Famous People" rule. People who become famous demand bigger salaries. ESPN ruthlessly gets rid of them, because they don't want to pay that salary. And that's the big reason that Grantland and the Keith Olbermann show went away -- because Bill Simmons and Keith Olbermann were making famous people money.
Who knows? I might be wrong about this -- this may be a saving strategy for ESPN. But I look at what they actually have anymore, as a sports fan, and well, why the hell would I buy that? I want the Cubs? I gotta pay Comcast, not ESPN*. I want the Blues? Well, I'm out of market, so the NHL app has that. I want curling? Well, YouTube, I guess, but certainly not ESPN.
On the entire Disney/ABC/ESPN bundle, the one thing that I really wanted that I couldn't get elsewhere was Phineas & Ferb, and lo and behold, iTunes had that. So... enjoy cutting away the things I was reading, ESPN.
* I go to a bar instead, because eewwww, Comcast.
posted by eriko at 6:50 AM on December 28, 2015
The issue: ESPN made bank on being the source for sports. When they started buying rights to big events, that made them even more important to the sports fan. For the longest time, the single most expensive bundle a cable company bought was the ESPN bundle, which is why Disney wanted them -- they bolted on the third most expensive (the Disney bundle) and made bank.
The problem now is twofold. 1) Cable as we know it is dying, as people go to the true endpoint of pay per view -- paying for only what they want, or paying for archives. You don't need to pay the HBO tax to watch Game of Thrones, you can just get Game of Thrones. 2) ESPN is losing more and more coverage because Fox/Sky are paying truly enormous amounts of money for the rights.
So, you have a sports channel with less and less sports *and* a population not willing to pay for "sports" but willing to pay for "Cubs games, Blues Hockey, and Curling." The outfits willing to provide that? They're getting that money, not ESPN, which you only get in a bundle with all the other Disney and ABC networks, and which likely doesn't even show many Cubs Games, Blues Games, or Curling. You're paying for 100% of the TV time, but you only want maybe 2% of it.
That model is dying hard, but ESPN, without imagination, has decided to focus on their "core product,"
Who knows? I might be wrong about this -- this may be a saving strategy for ESPN. But I look at what they actually have anymore, as a sports fan, and well, why the hell would I buy that? I want the Cubs? I gotta pay Comcast, not ESPN*. I want the Blues? Well, I'm out of market, so the NHL app has that. I want curling? Well, YouTube, I guess, but certainly not ESPN.
On the entire Disney/ABC/ESPN bundle, the one thing that I really wanted that I couldn't get elsewhere was Phineas & Ferb, and lo and behold, iTunes had that. So... enjoy cutting away the things I was reading, ESPN.
* I go to a bar instead, because eewwww, Comcast.
posted by eriko at 6:50 AM on December 28, 2015
I always thought Google Contributor was a clever attempt to deal with the standardization problem of micropayments - as a reader you pay a small monthly fee that then becomes an automatic bid on your own ad impressions. This usually outbids all but the premium advertisers, so instead of seeing an ad on a news article, you'll see a thank you message. This ensures that sites earn more money, and that non-paying users can see the article and still generate a trickle of revenue.
The key missing features IMO are the ability to filter bids to certain sites (I want The Onion to get my bids, but not crappy content farms I accidentally click to from Facebook), and enabling publishers to extend this system and deliver premium content to contributors.
posted by xthlc at 6:53 AM on December 28, 2015
The key missing features IMO are the ability to filter bids to certain sites (I want The Onion to get my bids, but not crappy content farms I accidentally click to from Facebook), and enabling publishers to extend this system and deliver premium content to contributors.
posted by xthlc at 6:53 AM on December 28, 2015
I can't speak to your situation Marienbad, and won't - except to say that sounds really tough. But facetious or not, that's a very uncharitable reading of Naju's post. You make a great point about access, but I didn't read that at all from what they said.
Frankly I don't like microtransactions and online cartels either. I tend to think that individual supporter models work the best, either recurring subscriptions or pledge-drives (it works for listener-supported radio and wikipedia, and everyone can enjoy those provided they have a method of receiving the content) and I'm intrigued by the idea of a 'streaming service for articles'.
But I share Naju's frustration at being told that the content they enjoy will necessarily fail because: economics. And I don't think there's anything bourgeoisie about reiterating the point that there IS a sizable audience for that stuff. Is anyone really disputing that Grantland was a high-qualiyy site?
posted by AAALASTAIR at 7:15 AM on December 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Frankly I don't like microtransactions and online cartels either. I tend to think that individual supporter models work the best, either recurring subscriptions or pledge-drives (it works for listener-supported radio and wikipedia, and everyone can enjoy those provided they have a method of receiving the content) and I'm intrigued by the idea of a 'streaming service for articles'.
But I share Naju's frustration at being told that the content they enjoy will necessarily fail because: economics. And I don't think there's anything bourgeoisie about reiterating the point that there IS a sizable audience for that stuff. Is anyone really disputing that Grantland was a high-qualiyy site?
posted by AAALASTAIR at 7:15 AM on December 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
From time to time, I think there's a solution to this, and then I hear numbers suggested like five dollars a year for a site you read regularly, and I think: no, there isn't.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 7:32 AM on December 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Linda_Holmes at 7:32 AM on December 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
What if it was 25 dollars a year, and it came with a tote bag?
posted by enjoymoreradio at 9:29 AM on December 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by enjoymoreradio at 9:29 AM on December 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
And to touch on what eriko said, ESPN may be precisely the reason that I cut the cable cord. Because cable channels are not allowed to purchase channels a la carte, my local cable provider is required to purchase every single ESPN network (all 14 of them) if they want ESPN Vanilla and SportsCenter. As a result, I am forced to pay for two SEC channels in a region of the country that doesn't give enough damns about the SEC to justify paying for one such channel, never mind a second channel which broadcasts nothing more than the SEC logo for 100+ hours a week.
They might as well replace the second SEC channel graphic with an image of an extended middle finger.
On topic: I still miss USA Today's Pop Candy. That was one of my must hit sites every morning. Uh, after Metafilter of course.
posted by dances with hamsters at 11:22 AM on December 28, 2015
They might as well replace the second SEC channel graphic with an image of an extended middle finger.
On topic: I still miss USA Today's Pop Candy. That was one of my must hit sites every morning. Uh, after Metafilter of course.
posted by dances with hamsters at 11:22 AM on December 28, 2015
But I share Naju's frustration at being told that the content they enjoy will necessarily fail because: economics. And I don't think there's anything bourgeoisie about reiterating the point that there IS a sizable audience for that stuff.
The audience is there. And it will support some stuff. The pity, charity, and do-gooder model works for NPR. Perhaps you are even a member. If so, would you be willing to support every single other site that you think is well written, at the same level at which you support NPR?
A little thought experiment. I have on the table before me a large, metaphorical envelope. Math time. I remember talking to a guy once who used to work for a commercial real estate brokerage. He said that in the early 2000s, his firm was paying $100K for a full page ad in the Sunday paper in the Boston Globe. Looks like the Times is getting a bit better than that now. I don't have hard figures to hand, but I'd guess there were maybe 100 such pages, scattered throughout the Sunday paper? Maybe 200. So ballpark $10-$20 mill in ad revenue on the Sunday paper alone. Let's say the Sunday edition made up about half the revenue. So maybe $20 - $50 million per week coming in in ad dollars. 52 weeks a year of that, and you could support staff of maybe 500 reporters and editors, plus support staff, at the height. (Today it's about 275.)
Globe's current Sunday circulation is ~375K. Let's be generous, and say back in the day they had, say, 600K. How much would each reader have to pay per week in subscriptions if the Globe wanted to go ad-free? (On top of the existing fee, that is.) I get about $33 - $66. Currently, they charge about $14 bucks a week for delivery, $8 for Sunday alone. So if the costs were fully borne by the subscribers, you'd be looking at $40 to $75 bucks a week.
To be fully clear, this is just a thought experiment on an imaginary envelope. Any of the assumptions above could be way, way, off. (Although the Times is getting about $100K a page in the Sunday magazine and employs the largest newsrooom in the country at a headcount of around 1,200.) The productions costs associated with a cultural criticism blog are vastly different from those of a large metro daily. Newspaper have unions. Early 2000s newspaper ad rates included some pretty hefty profit margins.
All I'm tying to get at here, is like, an order of magnitude. The kind of thing Linda Holmes is alluding to in her comment. I like being well informed. I like reading the news. I might be willing to pay a few hundred bucks a year even, spread out among the various news sources I enjoy. That wouldn't be enough to cover the daily paper alone, if said paper were forced to subsist soley on subscriber fees. Not with a staff of 275. Maybe with a staff of 50.
A site like Grantland, let's say it had a couple million readers, and maybe 10% of them were hard core enough to subscribe for $5 a month. That's about $1 million in monthly revenue. Grantland had about 40 staffers. Ignoring all other costs of running the site and assuming they could just split the subscription fee among them, that works out to the princely salary of $25,000 per, pre-tax. I liked Grantland a lot and I probably would have been willing to pay $5 a month for it. That's not enough to keep the writers in cat food. And if I'm honest with myself, I dunno if I'd have gone as high as $10. I know for sure I wouldn't spend $5 a month each on more than a handful of sites.
Hunh, I checked, and at its highest monthly traffic, Grantland just crested about 7 million visitors a month. Which would be $87,500 per staffer according to my math above. Not bad, might cover high-deductible health care for each one.
posted by Diablevert at 12:39 PM on December 28, 2015
The audience is there. And it will support some stuff. The pity, charity, and do-gooder model works for NPR. Perhaps you are even a member. If so, would you be willing to support every single other site that you think is well written, at the same level at which you support NPR?
A little thought experiment. I have on the table before me a large, metaphorical envelope. Math time. I remember talking to a guy once who used to work for a commercial real estate brokerage. He said that in the early 2000s, his firm was paying $100K for a full page ad in the Sunday paper in the Boston Globe. Looks like the Times is getting a bit better than that now. I don't have hard figures to hand, but I'd guess there were maybe 100 such pages, scattered throughout the Sunday paper? Maybe 200. So ballpark $10-$20 mill in ad revenue on the Sunday paper alone. Let's say the Sunday edition made up about half the revenue. So maybe $20 - $50 million per week coming in in ad dollars. 52 weeks a year of that, and you could support staff of maybe 500 reporters and editors, plus support staff, at the height. (Today it's about 275.)
Globe's current Sunday circulation is ~375K. Let's be generous, and say back in the day they had, say, 600K. How much would each reader have to pay per week in subscriptions if the Globe wanted to go ad-free? (On top of the existing fee, that is.) I get about $33 - $66. Currently, they charge about $14 bucks a week for delivery, $8 for Sunday alone. So if the costs were fully borne by the subscribers, you'd be looking at $40 to $75 bucks a week.
To be fully clear, this is just a thought experiment on an imaginary envelope. Any of the assumptions above could be way, way, off. (Although the Times is getting about $100K a page in the Sunday magazine and employs the largest newsrooom in the country at a headcount of around 1,200.) The productions costs associated with a cultural criticism blog are vastly different from those of a large metro daily. Newspaper have unions. Early 2000s newspaper ad rates included some pretty hefty profit margins.
All I'm tying to get at here, is like, an order of magnitude. The kind of thing Linda Holmes is alluding to in her comment. I like being well informed. I like reading the news. I might be willing to pay a few hundred bucks a year even, spread out among the various news sources I enjoy. That wouldn't be enough to cover the daily paper alone, if said paper were forced to subsist soley on subscriber fees. Not with a staff of 275. Maybe with a staff of 50.
A site like Grantland, let's say it had a couple million readers, and maybe 10% of them were hard core enough to subscribe for $5 a month. That's about $1 million in monthly revenue. Grantland had about 40 staffers. Ignoring all other costs of running the site and assuming they could just split the subscription fee among them, that works out to the princely salary of $25,000 per, pre-tax. I liked Grantland a lot and I probably would have been willing to pay $5 a month for it. That's not enough to keep the writers in cat food. And if I'm honest with myself, I dunno if I'd have gone as high as $10. I know for sure I wouldn't spend $5 a month each on more than a handful of sites.
Hunh, I checked, and at its highest monthly traffic, Grantland just crested about 7 million visitors a month. Which would be $87,500 per staffer according to my math above. Not bad, might cover high-deductible health care for each one.
posted by Diablevert at 12:39 PM on December 28, 2015
And what if it were 10% subscribers + 90% ad-supported? It would probably float by decently enough.
posted by naju at 1:24 PM on December 28, 2015
posted by naju at 1:24 PM on December 28, 2015
The thing about digital ads is that advertisers can see exactly how well they work. And therefore won't pay nearly as much for them as they did for print. The rule of thumb is print dollars=digital dimes=mobile pennies. Facebook and Google manage alright with them, but they're about the only ones. Hasty googling tells me that Google pulled in about $50 billion a year in 2012, for controlling about 75% of the searches on the Internet. At it peak, the newspaper industry alone made ~$65 billion in revenue. (It's less than a third of that, now.) Google ad spaces are as a rule much higher priced than the mere display advertising you find on content providers --- they're much closer to the act of purchasing.
To boot, ads and subscriptions fight each other. You see it here all the time --- any kind of paywall, even a semi-permeable one, tends to make content much harder to share and less likely to go viral. To attract the absolutely huge numbers you need on the web to sustain a fully ad-supported model, you need those occasional big hits. Semi-permeable paywalls also eat into subscriptions. It becomes like NPR --- the ones who subscribe are only the truly hardcore, the vast majority don't. This is the problem Shirky's describing --- forcing subscription doesn't work, enticing them isn't enough.
Like I said, I think the charity/altruistic/fan-service model of enticing people to pay can work. It's just never going to work as well or sustain as much as print did. Too much free competition.
posted by Diablevert at 1:46 PM on December 28, 2015
To boot, ads and subscriptions fight each other. You see it here all the time --- any kind of paywall, even a semi-permeable one, tends to make content much harder to share and less likely to go viral. To attract the absolutely huge numbers you need on the web to sustain a fully ad-supported model, you need those occasional big hits. Semi-permeable paywalls also eat into subscriptions. It becomes like NPR --- the ones who subscribe are only the truly hardcore, the vast majority don't. This is the problem Shirky's describing --- forcing subscription doesn't work, enticing them isn't enough.
Like I said, I think the charity/altruistic/fan-service model of enticing people to pay can work. It's just never going to work as well or sustain as much as print did. Too much free competition.
posted by Diablevert at 1:46 PM on December 28, 2015
I understand now - these poor people aren't going to want to read highbrow stuff because they are obviously poor and stupid. So fuck them, right? If they were smart they wouldn't be poor!
Oh, just wanted to say that this (from upthread, by marienbad) is such a disingenuous reading of my comment that it's not even worth responding to. Yes, fuck the dumb poor people! You nailed it.
posted by naju at 2:10 PM on December 28, 2015
Oh, just wanted to say that this (from upthread, by marienbad) is such a disingenuous reading of my comment that it's not even worth responding to. Yes, fuck the dumb poor people! You nailed it.
posted by naju at 2:10 PM on December 28, 2015
Counterpoints: Ben Thompson's Stratechery is a one-man operation that sells enough $100/year memberships to keep him pretty nicely afloat. Former two-decade magazine veteran Jason Snell now makes a living running a small indie shop of his own. My favorite recent comic artist, David Willis, makes $5,000 a month with Patreon. Indie magazines like The Loop take advantage of platforms that let them, you know, charge money for things, and as a result their writers get paid and they keep publishing pieces.
Grantland went under in part because ESPN has some serious issues as a publisher. Look at what happened to another of its enterprises, Jason Whitlock's "The Undefeated", which was intended as a companion to Grantland in many ways. The Dissolve, as best as I could tell, was trying to do for movies what Pitchfork does for music, which felt like a ludicrous idea from the start. The writing was great, but how on earth were they expecting to make money off that? Some of these sites involved small groups of people who'd been working without pay, sometimes for longer than a decade, deciding they didn't have time to keep their work up to snuff. That's not a 2015 phenomenon. That's an every year phenomenon.
Meanwhile, you have sites like Collapse Board and The Quietus going strong, the latter producing some of the best critical writing around. The Awl continues to amaze. The Gawker Media umbrella continues to up its quality control, the occasional crappy outbreak aside, and its latest reorganization's turned Gawker into one of my favorite daily blogs—great political coverage, surprisingly good essays, and great book and film reviews. (If you want to discount Gawker for the lowbrow crap it pulls, then you'd better take Grantland off your list—funny how Newsweek omits the time that it literally drove a trans woman to suicide, huh?) You've also got The Bad Guys Win to look forward to, and of course certain legitimately indie bloggers, like the former Et Tu, Mr. Destructo?, have graduated to become full-fledged columnists. I only just learned that Lindy West writes for the Guardian now too—yet another graduate of a bunch of tiny publications suddenly (and deservedly!) writing for international audiences.
More small outlets for creative, critical, and cultural writing seem to spring up each year than I have time to keep track of. The two big fish in Newsweek's story, Grantland and The Dissolve, weren't the indie sites that some commenters in this thread seem to be bemoaning the deaths of; Grantland was a project of one of the biggest media conglomerates on the planet, and The Dissolve was a spin-off of arguably the most successful blog of all time (and Pitchfork is hardly an innocent itself). This sky-is-falling attitude requires you to ignore dozens, if not hundreds, of success stories, focusing only on a handful of closures and ignoring the many, many ways in which people have found ways of making a living doing what they love.
(It's funny to other people that the publication talking about this is Newsweek, right? For that matter, wasn't Newsweek bought by The Daily Beast some bunch of years ago? When did it become its own thing again? And who even writes for it these days? Can I still get my weekly supplement of George Will grouching about college hippies, or do I have to go somewhere else for my uninspired defenses of the status quo?)
posted by rorgy at 3:21 PM on December 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Grantland went under in part because ESPN has some serious issues as a publisher. Look at what happened to another of its enterprises, Jason Whitlock's "The Undefeated", which was intended as a companion to Grantland in many ways. The Dissolve, as best as I could tell, was trying to do for movies what Pitchfork does for music, which felt like a ludicrous idea from the start. The writing was great, but how on earth were they expecting to make money off that? Some of these sites involved small groups of people who'd been working without pay, sometimes for longer than a decade, deciding they didn't have time to keep their work up to snuff. That's not a 2015 phenomenon. That's an every year phenomenon.
Meanwhile, you have sites like Collapse Board and The Quietus going strong, the latter producing some of the best critical writing around. The Awl continues to amaze. The Gawker Media umbrella continues to up its quality control, the occasional crappy outbreak aside, and its latest reorganization's turned Gawker into one of my favorite daily blogs—great political coverage, surprisingly good essays, and great book and film reviews. (If you want to discount Gawker for the lowbrow crap it pulls, then you'd better take Grantland off your list—funny how Newsweek omits the time that it literally drove a trans woman to suicide, huh?) You've also got The Bad Guys Win to look forward to, and of course certain legitimately indie bloggers, like the former Et Tu, Mr. Destructo?, have graduated to become full-fledged columnists. I only just learned that Lindy West writes for the Guardian now too—yet another graduate of a bunch of tiny publications suddenly (and deservedly!) writing for international audiences.
More small outlets for creative, critical, and cultural writing seem to spring up each year than I have time to keep track of. The two big fish in Newsweek's story, Grantland and The Dissolve, weren't the indie sites that some commenters in this thread seem to be bemoaning the deaths of; Grantland was a project of one of the biggest media conglomerates on the planet, and The Dissolve was a spin-off of arguably the most successful blog of all time (and Pitchfork is hardly an innocent itself). This sky-is-falling attitude requires you to ignore dozens, if not hundreds, of success stories, focusing only on a handful of closures and ignoring the many, many ways in which people have found ways of making a living doing what they love.
(It's funny to other people that the publication talking about this is Newsweek, right? For that matter, wasn't Newsweek bought by The Daily Beast some bunch of years ago? When did it become its own thing again? And who even writes for it these days? Can I still get my weekly supplement of George Will grouching about college hippies, or do I have to go somewhere else for my uninspired defenses of the status quo?)
posted by rorgy at 3:21 PM on December 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I got the sense from this profile that The Awl has a very small cushion for surviving. Will be interesting to see what happens to them. Actually a pretty good article on this exact conundrum, and how to potentially survive it by unorthodox structure, staying very lean, and being wary of scale:
But the economics of online advertising favor scale, and The Awl is small: the site now gets a little over a million uniques a month, and the network usually gets 3 million, sometimes 4 million, Sicha says. (For comparison, BuzzFeed.com gets 190 million, according to Quantcast, which tends to be lower than internal Google Analytics numbers.) The Awl makes a virtue out of its narrow audience when talking to advertisers, calling their readers "indielectuals," a term coined by former publisher John Shankman and which Sicha uses with an exaggerated shudder. According to Sicha, 29 percent of the site’s readers have graduate degrees.posted by naju at 3:38 PM on December 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
"By restricting audience size intentionally, you actually have a coherent audience to sell," Sicha says. "We actually argue a lot over what the maximum audience size is for each of the publications, and it’s not that big. I think The Awl should never have more than 3 million readers a month. Anything beyond it and you’re dipping into people who can’t make sense of the content, who will be a distraction — it’s not for everyone else."
Operating a site with narrow appeal means running extremely lean. Annual revenue is "in the very low seven figures," Sicha says, and at any given time the company has enough funds for one to four months’ worth of payroll in the bank. Instead of hiring writers, they partner with them to launch new sites, splitting revenue 50/50 between editors and the company, which handles the business and tech operations. Everyone owns a part of either their site or the company, Sicha says. "Basically nobody works for anyone here. It’s really a giant lesbian Australian socialized collective with capitalism in the mix in a really gross way."
What I'm saying isn't meant to be a value judgment on the willingness to pay five bucks a year. And if everyone paid five bucks a year, sure! I'm a big supporter of the transformative potential of everybody kicking in small amounts when they can. But pragmatically, when people propose subscription models in which they're honestly communicating how much a site they read regularly is worth to them and they say it's worth five dollars a year, that's a hard thing for me to see as a valid alternative. Because there will always be a zillion free riders - if you set up a paywall, people shrug, hand around passwords and say it's your own fault for not finding a model they can't defeat. If people who self-identify as wanting to step up for good content value it at five dollars a year for a site they read regularly, that's sort of an unsolvable problem. That's all I'm saying. You have the right to set whatever value you want and support what you want. You're under no obligation to support anything. I'm just pondering the future.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 4:29 PM on December 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Linda_Holmes at 4:29 PM on December 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Spotify as a funding model for writers is problematic, considering how Spotify pays artists. (Previously)
posted by ardgedee at 5:19 PM on December 28, 2015
posted by ardgedee at 5:19 PM on December 28, 2015
Also bringing Spotify, if there was some sort of cartel for writers/sites without vulture capitalist funding, the bigger ones would quickly start demanding a bigger share (unless you think the reason Radiohead and Taylor Swift are constantly whining about streaming is about protecting the little guy, not to get a bigger slice of the finite cake for themselves).
posted by lmfsilva at 6:18 PM on December 28, 2015
posted by lmfsilva at 6:18 PM on December 28, 2015
What I'm saying isn't meant to be a value judgment on the willingness to pay five bucks a year.
I didn't take that from your comment, Linda. Sorry if my long-winded bs made it seem like I did. It just seemed to me that it sort of touched on the same issue that set me a-ranting, that there's an issue of magnitude here that people fail to grasp. Money being finite and content being infinite is the crux of the problem. What with everything else going on in the economy, getting vast hordes of people to pony up for entertainment when they don't have to and could be saving up that money for food or bills or rent or just savings is...Sisyphean.
more small outlets for creative, critical, and cultural writing seem to spring up each year than I have time to keep track of. The two big fish in Newsweek's story, Grantland and The Dissolve, weren't the indie sites...This sky-is-falling attitude requires you to ignore dozens, if not hundreds, of success stories, focusing only on a handful of closures and ignoring the many, many ways in which people have found ways of making a living doing what they love.
The counterpoints you raise seem on the whole to be one- to two-man bands. Couldn't find a thing on either of the music blogs on what they pay their freelancers, if anything. I don't think sustaining one person on an audience of a million views and 10,000 subscribers a month is impossible. Michaelangelo did okay for himself out of the Medici, and plenty an artist after him has beneffited from an eccentric millionaire. I just think that if we're back to the Renaissance for our business model we've lost something. Namely, mid-size professional publications that can pay a living wage to a couple dozen writers. I don't think great writing will ever go away. Because people are willing to do it for free. I'm just bummed at the thought that writing might become a job like playing baseball is a job.
posted by Diablevert at 8:09 PM on December 28, 2015
I didn't take that from your comment, Linda. Sorry if my long-winded bs made it seem like I did. It just seemed to me that it sort of touched on the same issue that set me a-ranting, that there's an issue of magnitude here that people fail to grasp. Money being finite and content being infinite is the crux of the problem. What with everything else going on in the economy, getting vast hordes of people to pony up for entertainment when they don't have to and could be saving up that money for food or bills or rent or just savings is...Sisyphean.
more small outlets for creative, critical, and cultural writing seem to spring up each year than I have time to keep track of. The two big fish in Newsweek's story, Grantland and The Dissolve, weren't the indie sites...This sky-is-falling attitude requires you to ignore dozens, if not hundreds, of success stories, focusing only on a handful of closures and ignoring the many, many ways in which people have found ways of making a living doing what they love.
The counterpoints you raise seem on the whole to be one- to two-man bands. Couldn't find a thing on either of the music blogs on what they pay their freelancers, if anything. I don't think sustaining one person on an audience of a million views and 10,000 subscribers a month is impossible. Michaelangelo did okay for himself out of the Medici, and plenty an artist after him has beneffited from an eccentric millionaire. I just think that if we're back to the Renaissance for our business model we've lost something. Namely, mid-size professional publications that can pay a living wage to a couple dozen writers. I don't think great writing will ever go away. Because people are willing to do it for free. I'm just bummed at the thought that writing might become a job like playing baseball is a job.
posted by Diablevert at 8:09 PM on December 28, 2015
Money being finite and content being infinite is the crux of the problem.
see if everybody had 'money' to buy all this stuff, none of this would be a problem :P that is all!
posted by kliuless at 10:01 PM on December 28, 2015
see if everybody had 'money' to buy all this stuff, none of this would be a problem :P that is all!
posted by kliuless at 10:01 PM on December 28, 2015
What with everything else going on in the economy, getting vast hordes of people to pony up for entertainment when they don't have to and could be saving up that money for food or bills or rent or just savings is...Sisyphean.
Right, I'm assuming the five dollars a year thing is completely honest: "Sustaining a site I like and read regularly is worth about five dollars a year to me." In other words, maybe three cheap cups of coffee or a third of a single movie ticket.
It is indeed the low value people place on this kind of writing (yikes, not necessarily all of which has existing as "entertainment" as its only aspiration) that dooms it. When you say "they don't have to," you're essentially saying that they don't have to because they don't care that much whether they read that site or whatever is free, meaning individual writers and outlets have literally no value to them and reading The Dissolve or Grantland is no better than reading Random Person's Free Tumblr. Which is a totally, totally okay way to feel, but it does burn me up slightly when those same people then go into loud mourning over the ends of these sites. Sites like these are dying as a direct result of not just small audiences, but audiences that, even when nominally enthused, consider them to be of no real value.
There's a lot to be said and written and discovered about business models, but ultimately, ultimately, if people place no value on something (for instance, edited content as opposed to sloppy unedited content) and it costs money to produce, it will eventually not be produced at all except by rich people who can afford to do it as a hobby. Which is why my actual concern about cultural writing is in part that the refusal to exchange money for it the way you do with other things means what you'll wind up with is a profession dominated by people who can afford to be dabblers because they have rich spouses or family money. That's not the direction I had hoped to see such writing move.
Again, everybody has the absolute right to pay for what they want and not pay for what they don't want to, but every time something like Grantland dies, there's a sort of "dumb old media dummies won't figure out the right business model" thing that gets said, as if everybody is waiting around to give it plenty of money to succeed on if only they were given the chance. And then you learn that what they mean by "plenty of money" is five dollars a year. There's no business model that can really fix the problem of people considering something to be of no value; it doesn't matter how you structure it. That's why comments like that -- comments that step right up and declare a year's worth of work by an entire site worth of writers you already know you like to be worth one-third as much as a single viewing of a two-hour movie that might or might not be crap -- are sad to me. Not offensive; sad. Saddening. That's all.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 12:07 PM on December 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
Right, I'm assuming the five dollars a year thing is completely honest: "Sustaining a site I like and read regularly is worth about five dollars a year to me." In other words, maybe three cheap cups of coffee or a third of a single movie ticket.
It is indeed the low value people place on this kind of writing (yikes, not necessarily all of which has existing as "entertainment" as its only aspiration) that dooms it. When you say "they don't have to," you're essentially saying that they don't have to because they don't care that much whether they read that site or whatever is free, meaning individual writers and outlets have literally no value to them and reading The Dissolve or Grantland is no better than reading Random Person's Free Tumblr. Which is a totally, totally okay way to feel, but it does burn me up slightly when those same people then go into loud mourning over the ends of these sites. Sites like these are dying as a direct result of not just small audiences, but audiences that, even when nominally enthused, consider them to be of no real value.
There's a lot to be said and written and discovered about business models, but ultimately, ultimately, if people place no value on something (for instance, edited content as opposed to sloppy unedited content) and it costs money to produce, it will eventually not be produced at all except by rich people who can afford to do it as a hobby. Which is why my actual concern about cultural writing is in part that the refusal to exchange money for it the way you do with other things means what you'll wind up with is a profession dominated by people who can afford to be dabblers because they have rich spouses or family money. That's not the direction I had hoped to see such writing move.
Again, everybody has the absolute right to pay for what they want and not pay for what they don't want to, but every time something like Grantland dies, there's a sort of "dumb old media dummies won't figure out the right business model" thing that gets said, as if everybody is waiting around to give it plenty of money to succeed on if only they were given the chance. And then you learn that what they mean by "plenty of money" is five dollars a year. There's no business model that can really fix the problem of people considering something to be of no value; it doesn't matter how you structure it. That's why comments like that -- comments that step right up and declare a year's worth of work by an entire site worth of writers you already know you like to be worth one-third as much as a single viewing of a two-hour movie that might or might not be crap -- are sad to me. Not offensive; sad. Saddening. That's all.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 12:07 PM on December 29, 2015 [4 favorites]
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