Are subscriptions the only way we'll get news?

The news media industry is in bad shape. The double punch of social media and the 24 hour news cycle devalued journalism. I've been thinking a lot this week about where the media goes from here.

My current favorite podcast, Search Engine, had interviewed with Ezra Klein: How do we survive the media apocalypse? It's worth the listen. Klein talks about how hard news (reporting on wars, politics or whatnot) costs money to make and is unattractive to advertisers, while niche subject areas historically brought in the money. What struck me about this was his argument: what Substack actually did was unbundle the money-making part of the news.

Goodbye "mainstream"?

Substack is just one example in a trend unlocked by the web: Journalists specializing in one vertical (think tech, music, etc) and created new news businesses built on websites and email newsletters.

That shift matches the filter bubbles which social media have allowed to flourish. After reading The View from Here what was most striking to me was how that fragmentation has even created a shift past cancel culture:

And the pool of cancelers appears to be shrinking. In a recent article, New York Times critic Jon Caramanica observed, “Audiences that don’t care about an artist’s indiscretions can be more sizable than the ones that do.” But it’s not just a change in the Zeitgeist, or a “vibe shift,” as a widely circulated New York magazine story termed it. The eco-system has also changed.

The article poses a solution in subscriptions with this wonderful insight:

Nothing stops a mob in its tracks like a paywall.

Hello subscriptions

Subscriptions aren't a new thing for journalism - The New York Times' digital subscriptions are a well known case study, and older still is the idea of subscribing to a print newspaper. It feels like a moment where that revenue stream is becoming more important than ever.

From A Media Operator's The Era of Traffic Is Officially Over:

Traffic as a unit of currency simply won’t matter anymore. We will need to develop new ways of acquiring and retaining audiences. The quantity of people may be smaller, but they will more likely be seeking out the information you have. These will be the types of readers we want versus the passive fly-by traffic that we have had over the years. We’ll need to invest more in brand building and direct response marketing.

It's a pretty strong argument for a forthcoming change to the media landscape.

Subscriptions are a wonderful way to support journalism. There's a more direct relationship between reader and writer, and the incentive structure generally favors quality. But subscriptions need to be just one part of the solution. Some news stories shouldn't be behind paywalls (like important breaking news like climate disasters). And not everyone can afford to pay. That same A Media Operator's article even quotes a Reuters survey: "nearly 50% of non-paying subscribers say they’ll never pay".

One fear I have with a future dominated by subscriptions is the truth will be behind paywalls and the rest of the web will be littered with junk and conspiracies.

New news

The change that will come from more subscription-based online news and the changes happening to social media create a landscape ripe for something new in news journalism. That may be in content formats, business models or something in-between.

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