An interesting observation over at Vox Day:
No one wants Fake News
The media appears to have finally converged itself into a corner:
The mass migration of advertising to U.S. technology giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon has hammered revenues while more than half the world’s population now has access to news via an internet connection.
But will people actually pay for news?
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report that most people would not pay for online news and that there had been only a small increase in the proportion of people willing to do so in the last six years.
Even among those who do pay, there is “subscription fatigue” - many are tired of being asked to pay for so many different subscriptions. Many will opt for films or music rather than pay for news. So some media companies will fail.
“Much of the population is perfectly happy with the news that they can access for free and even amongst those who are willing to pay, the majority are only willing to sign up for one subscription,” Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute, said by telephone.
“A lot of the public is really alienated from a lot of the journalism that they see - they don’t find it particularly trustworthy, they don’t find it particularly relevant and they don’t find it leaves them in a better place.”
Why would anyone pay to be told what isn't true? The advertising model propped up the mainstream media and allowed it to fold, spindle, and otherwise mutilate the truth because there was no direct link between the news consumer and the news provider. Now that Google and Facebook have broken the advertising model, and Amazon has taught people to go direct to the source, the ABCNNBCBS cabal is discovering that they don't actually have any real fans.
People will pay for quality content. People will pay for truthful content. Unauthorized is proof of that. But they won't pay to be insulted, mocked, despised, and deceived.
Be sure to visit Vox's site to read the comments - some trenchant observations there...
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