Paying for news — Benedict Evans

Take this paragraph: it is just assumed that Google and Facebook ought to be paying publishers for their content, but any sort of rational evaluation would suggest that money should flow in the opposite direction. Google and Facebook direct traffic to publishers, and in Facebook’s case in particular, that traffic comes from the publishers themselve... See more

That doesn’t mean they can’t change, but so far, there has been a general unwillingness to look at the real problem. Rather than throwing out audacious claims like Facebook and Google should pay us for the right to send us traffic, we should, instead, be looking at finding ways to deliver value to our readers and ad partners in a way that platforms... See more

But it feels strange that we basically settled with the paywall as the only viable business model for written content on the internet. A model that is at odds with how the web is structured and set up economically:

That meant there were three strategies available to media companies looking to survive on the Internet. First, cater to Google. This meant a heavy emphasis on both speed and SEO, and an investment in anticipating and creating content to answer consumer questions. Or you could cater to Facebook, which meant a heavy emphasis on click-bait and human i... See more

Consider text: given that newspapers monetized by placing advertisements next to news stories, the first websites tried to monetize by — you guessed it — placing advertisements next to news stories. This worked, but not particularly well; publishers talked about print dollars and digital dimes, and later mobile pennies. Sure, the Internet drew atte... See more