Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/12/apple-news.html
The event will be Apple’s first major announcement in 2019.
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Nah, you’re just constituting the body politic wrong. /s
Paid news service for the world’s first trillion-dollar corporation.
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I’ll hold judgment until the specifics are announced… but I’d sure love there to be an easy way to both read and send money to real journalists (with a reasonable cut to whoever allows that to happen).
Subscribing to my local paper is half charity and half hoping that someone will keep an eye on city hall and local political / business shenanigans.
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That would be nice, right now I pick 3-4 news sources that I subscribe to or donate to, but I have other sources I would like to patrnoize, but can’t justify an ongoing subscription for a few articles now and then.
I would call out that I am not a fan of specific news-apps, somehow they are all worse than just using the HTML versions. So no high hopes here.
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Why on earth would I want to subscribe to any news service when I can get access to all the news I can stomach free of charge using a web browser?
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And if you did want to pay for news, who would you pay? That pinnacle of journalism… Apple?
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Yeah, not really seeing the point of this putative service.
If it’s all about providing access to articles that are normally paywalled, and if I am an extreme news junkie who cannot satisfy myself with the near-infinite number of articles that are available for free, then maybe an all in one sub that gets me behind the paywall on dozen sites for one monthly price might be interesting… but the number of such extreme news junkies is, surely, pretty darn low?
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It seems very premature to complain about the terms or the cut of the revenue. If Apple (or anyone) could convince me to pay $120/year for a curated news subscription, that would be $120/year more than anyone is currently getting from me.
Is there anyone else close to attempting something similar?
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i got a discount subscription to the new york time cuz i finally got sick of the paywall and they had a cheap offer fo a couple bucks a week at one point. I really wish i could get the washington post too but that would add an extra 10 bucks a month. Who knows what I’m missing from other papers… I get most of my news from free services like the guardian and slate, but My guess is there’s a million people like me who don’t wanna pay for a bunch of separate subscriptions but would be cool with 10 bucks a month for all the best ones. I think this is a great idea if the news organizations got on board.
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Apple isn’t sharing user data with third parties? Good. Clickbait articles pushing my feed to the extremes has ruined all other news aggregators.
If Apple can provide a non-sensationalized news service, I…won’t pay for it, but I’ll applaud the effort.
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i mean i understand WHY they need subscriptions, because you have to pay for good journalism. And yet it seems kinda F’d up that good journalism is primarily for an upper class with the extra income to pay for it. There needs to be a better way and maybe a “netflix for news” model is getting closer to that. The only thing i could think would be better would be some form of socialized funding so everyone has access (though i can already hear people screaming over the implications of that).
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One model that’s emerging from the crashing and burning of the surveillance capitalist ad-based model is subscriptions not for access behind a paywall, but as a means of supporting the work the publication is doing. The Guardian appears to be going this route - there’s no paywall, but every story on their site paper ends with a plea that you subscribe in order to support more journalism like what you just read.
ETA: Kottke muses on this model here:
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Yeah I appreciate that for sure. I’m not sure how viable that is on a large scale but I like that model. It’s kept NPR alive and brought back MST3K. ha. It definitely can work if something has enough dedicated followers with a little extra money.
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I don’t care, I don’t have anything apple, I avoid them like the plague
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As the saying goes: the devil believes in you.
Seriously though, as with Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, ect…the sociopolitical and economic impact of these corporations effects the lives of you, your community and the world you inhabit even if you never type their dred URL into your address bar.
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And you came here and set up an account just to say that?
Welcome to BB! Stay edgy, my friend.
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So what? If publishers want to keep 100% of the gains and spy on their users, that is exactly what they have in the present system. 
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If you’re going to build your identity around Apple, you might as well at least get the benefit of using their products. Many of them are quite good.
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I currently pay monthly fees for the Guardian, NYT, Washington Post, Talking Points Memo and various podcasts via Patreon. There are several other sites I read regularly which prefer to piss me off and slap away the money I’m waving in their faces by insisting on sharting ads at me as their only revenue source (naming no names).
I’m sure I am unusual in this; I spend too much, and partly I’m just doing it to make an ornery, abstract point. But I frequently want to sign up for other paid sites, e.g. the Economist, and am put off because my content spending is already too high. It’s arbitrary and unsatisfying. If all these outlets were on a “Netflix for news” subscription, I would jump at that even if it cost as much as what I’m paying now.
But I am ultra-skeptical about publishers’ willingness to sign up. If you tell the NYT that people will spend $10 a month for news, they will hear “people will spend $10 a month for the Times (plus we can still run ads and sell our subscriber lists)”. That sounds stupid, and it is, but it is exactly the thought process behind people complaining about Apple taking a “cut”, as if the whole $10 belongs to their specific publication by right. In other words, it’s like the producers of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt complaining that Netflix takes a ??% cut of the $11 a month people pay to watch their show.
If I thought this could happen, I would prefer it if someone other than Apple did it, because they have some disturbing attitudes to content. But I could see Apple forbidding ads and upselling (“visit our website to pay extra for crosswords and sport!”), and they’d certainly forbid data harvesting, which most tech companies wouldn’t. If they keep $5 a month, that seems like a lot, but it is literally none of my business.
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