All the news about coffee and turtlenecks that’s fit to print.
There are some people, I’m sure, who MUST HAVE the New York Times, nothing else will do. But not many.
I mean, as mentioned above, I’m the kind of consumer paywalled sites presumably masturbate over, and even I only pay for the New York Times so I can answer the question “I wonder how / if the New York Times reported that”. On the whole, I find it insufferable.
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Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s think of the good old days when newspapers existed only in printed paper. Most people I’m guessing were like my family growing up. You’d have a subscription to your one local paper and maybe a second weekend subscription. You might buy the occasional big city newspaper when you’re in town. How much would that average consumer be paying a month back when the newspaper industry was working just great? Wouldn’t it make sense to spend approximately that amount of money but instead of just sending it to a couple local papers the same money is spread over hundreds of papers that don’t even have to spend money on printing? And making sure the funds are distributed fairly according to usage.
That’s essentially what I imagine a “Netflix for news” would do… seems like a great idea to me… sure the service provider (Apple or Netflix or whoever) would take a cut, but remember we’re also not printing thousands of miles of physical newsprint daily. That must have been a huge expense in the good old days…
A 50-50 split does sound unfair, but I think the publishers should take it anyway and try to negotiate something better.
Right now I spend maybe $50 / year on news (a couple of annual subscriptions). A $10 / month plan with the right publishers involved would get me to sign up in a heartbeat. I would instantly double the amount of money I spend on news.
The fact that Apple doesn’t share my personal information with publishers only makes it better. When I watch Star Wars on Netflix, should George Lucas get to know stuff about me?
I’m cautiously optimistic about this service.
Edit: I wonder how far Apple is prepared to go with the Netflix model. Will they start producing their own content?
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Push it just a little bit further…
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