You Shouldn’t Have To Hate Your News Source To Support It
from the support-techdirt dept
Last week, I pointed out that part of the reason for running our current fundraiser (donate $100 or more and you’ll get our first commemorative challenge coin) is to show that it is possible to have a successful media business model that doesn’t involve annoying its community into paying.
Apparently that struck a nerve. A (actually very good) journalist for a billionaire-owned news org complained, suggesting that it was unfair of me to call out other media organizations for choosing to annoy people for money. Which billionaire? Does it matter? The list is long enough that you could throw a dart.
The crux of the argument seemed to be that there just aren’t that many ways for news orgs (billionaire-owned or not) to make money these days, and thus I shouldn’t call out those who have chosen an “annoy people until they pay” method.
I disagree.
One of the very earliest areas of coverage on Techdirt was about the changing music industry, and how the record labels’ Napster-era strategy of disrespecting music’s biggest fans by accusing them of all being thieves was not in their long-term best interests. Rather, working on finding a better business model that enabled fans to enjoy more music would be the better, more sustainable strategy. Today I would argue that I was correct.
I think the same is true in the news business. Insisting that the only way that a news org can make money is to be actively hostile to your readers/watchers/listeners strikes me as unsustainable and going down the wrong road.
Tragically, one thing that we’re seeing is that the news orgs with the least community-hostile approach tend to be right wing MAGA shitpost factories. They’re running on dark money or extracting cash from the perpetually credulous, but either way they’ve figured out that not actively pissing off your audience creates loyalty. It’s a depressing lesson in how the worst actors sometimes understand community dynamics better than legacy institutions.
But it would be nice if we could show the world a better way. That you can have a publication that does, in fact, respect its community. That doesn’t want to annoy you into paying. That doesn’t want to only make its content shareable if you have a subscription or if you first give up all sorts of private data about yourself.
And that’s where you come in. While Techdirt will accept donations year-round, if you want to get one of these cool new commemorative challenge coins, you have until Monday, January 5th, to make your donation. On Tuesday we’ll be submitting our order of how many coins get minted, so we’re down to our final week if you want in.
Help show the world that a good, thoughtful news site can be reader supported, but without having to use tactics that disrespect its community to do so.
Filed Under: business models, journalism, support
Companies: techdirt
Comments on “You Shouldn’t Have To Hate Your News Source To Support It”
“I told myself that deep-throating a billionaire was the only way to get by in this business! Don’t prove me wrong!”
Both can be true? Many orgs have tried different methods, including the one you’re using now. Most fail. The old methods aren’t sustainable, but no one seems to have found a replacement.
The voluntary donation model has worked for a few independent journalists or small teams on e.g. Substack (and a few other places like Youtube or blogs). There’s also stuff like Propublica, Lawfare, 404Media, the Verge, etc. TD is lucky to be in that very specific niche where that’s probably viable. But it doesn’t seem to be something that can scale broadly. (And to be honest, even with all those examples where the content is available, the annoyance of paywalls gets replaced with a steady stream of asking for donations and/or ads.)
It kinda does, actually. Because in order for things like a donor led model to work, you seem to need certain things like a personal connection to your userbase. Legacy media like newspapers do not seem well suited to that. It’s not a coincidence that the ones that are working are things like Substack, which is (relatively) low overhead, a single journalist can build a particular brand, etc. News orgs have tried other models, and they can be pretty clever. But for every success story listed above, there’s a Vox that had to go from free access to a hybrid model or died outright.
I don’t think it was a shift in attitude that did it. It was the shift in technology. The rise of iTunes and later streaming did (not to mention, they’re still quite hostile to pirating). That confluence of convenience, scalability, etc that makes things pencil out is not something that is guaranteed. And even now the model is pretty flawed, with artists typically relying heavily on things like live shows. To find a better model, it has to actually exist.
I would literally pay $100 for your site to disappear.
Re:
Test it out, send $100 here:
https://rtb.techdirt.com/products/friend-of-techdirt/
Re: Oh, look bottom feeders are us showed up
One thing that is still true regardless of which method of prompting for reader support a news site is chosen: The bottom feeder class is always about silencing others
Wonder if there's a term for that? 'Connect with fans', 'Reason to Buy', something like that
The crux of the argument seemed to be that there just aren’t that many ways for news orgs (billionaire-owned or not) to make money these days, and thus I shouldn’t call out those who have chosen an “annoy people until they pay” method.
I couldn’t diagnose or fix a car problem more tricky than a flat tire even if I had a gun to my head but I would still be quite confident in criticizing someone who suggested that the best solution to a flat tire is filling it with cement and the best solution to a crack in the windshield is to cover the entire thing in opaque duct-tape.
Just because you don’t know a perfect answer to a problem doesn’t mean you can’t point out when you think someone else is getting it wrong and ‘annoy the people you’re trying to get money from’ might work for a while, but it also has good odds of convincing them to look elsewhere for someone that respects them more.
Online news follows the same business model as those music sites which sold both DRM and non-DRM copies of the same music: hamburgers $7, hamburgers without strawberry jam $10.