Pumping Iron

Well Rob, that omnipresent pr0n on Twitter you talk about hit me today. I've been with James in the past and wondered what you were talking about. I was on this Noam Blum post today and Rosii was in the comments. Her picture was blocked with a nudity content warning and I didn't click but it was unexpected.

Ricochet Audio Network (View Post):

The boys are back!

Really?

After that, you don't think immediately of:

Since the conversation had moved on, I did not have the opportunity to return to the topic of reviving the print journalism model. So:

Giving away the print edition but charging for online is an interesting idea. Opening up a restaurant that feeds everyone for free but charges money for people to look at the menu online is also an interesting idea.

The print readership and the online readership are different species. The former skews older, in the sense that a cemetery skews older. They are more committed to the concept of a newspaper, of a daily summation, a tactile instrument of information conveyance, a specifically designed instance of organized information that presents the day's events and concerns in a series of folded folios. World, Local, Variety, Business, Sports. It's an old model, a venerable model, and an excellent way of arranging the flood of information.

This old model is supplemented by the online incarnation, a nimble version that provides the information received since the Paper of the Day cast it all in stone. The ideal reader is someone who has an attachment to print, and hits the website throughout the day. They are happy to pay for the paper. It's madness to stop charging the people who are happy to pay.

The online reader is fickle and brand-indifferent. They come to the website from a variety of directions - shared links, Facebook, the rare effective Twitter link, the search result burped up by the all-powerful Google. They want to snack or nibble or maybe just try that one thing, once, before shooting off in another direction to follow a link to the Daily Mail or maybe a celeb 'gram post or maybe a TikTok that showed up in the FOR YOU pane of Twitter. They live in a vaporous swirl of information and momentary amusement or outrage, are more interested in novelty than accuracy, and are indifferent to news-org brands. They don't want to pay for anything. They hit a paywall, they back out, and find a way to pirate the information.

A small percentage will subscribe, though. Converting the tsunami of clicks to a dependable stream of paying customers is the challenge facing every newsgathering organization. The people who subscribe are good customers, because they've recognized that the institution behind all this information has some stature and cred, and provides many things beyond the narrow interest that drove you to the site in the first place. If you exhaust your free views of Local Football Team stories, you might subscribe, discover what else the organization provides, and you settle in to be a regular subscriber who builds a connection with the brand.

(This is hard for most papers, because they have been hollowed out by distant corporate malfeasance, and have few local resources left to provide unique content. The big chains and investment groups regard the papers as short-term prospects and extract all the value built up over the years until the installed base dies or cancels.)

I agree with Barton that print can work, but it has to provide an easy noncommittal transaction to hook the noncommittal. No one carries change anymore, so the coin-op paybox model is toast, but waving your phone or watch at a box that gives you a thick sheaf of interesting words and pictures is a possible model. Especially since print is now where online was 15 years ago: the interesting alternative. Online, at the start, felt like a liberation from the dull static world of print. Now the solidity of print is a respite from the weightless gales of online life.

I would still get a daily newspaper, but the local one has gone up to at least $2 per day and $4 or $5 for Sunday, and it's also a shadow of the past size. That's ridiculous, and I simply can't justify it. Although...

Sequoia Capital lost a ton of money in the FTX disaster. I can't understand that. No accountants. No real board of directors. Everybody on the board was suspicious. I can't understand why anybody would trust Anthony Scaramucci on anything. The government didn't do a damn thing about it. Now it's not even in the news because the news is state controlled media. I forget the guys name, I think it's Gary Gensler, is a democrat operative. He was the regulator over it. FTX gave zillions to the Democrat party. The whole thing is just incredible, and now poof it's gone from the media.

This is what you get when you print money all of the time. We have been doing this since 1996 at least.