The LA Times's investigation into Purdue Pharma in 2016 revealed internal Purdue documents demonstrating the company's culpability in fueling the opioid crisis.<p>> The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure from 12-hour dosing.<p>I don't have many recurring subscriptions, and I don't live in LA, but I signed up for the Times the day the reporting came out. So rare is quality investigative journalism these days.<p>Fast forward 3 years, and "Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion" (Wikipedia).<p>As far as I know the settlement was never finalized. And I don't want to make it seem that the Times was the only organization looking into Purdue. But I wish a fraction of that settlement could be re-invested into investigative journalism.<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/</a>
Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet?<p>I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription.<p>I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment.<p>New York Times $50/yr
Wall Street Journal $100
Bloomberg $420
LA Times $98
The Guardian £119
Washington Post ~$80<p>I don't want to subscribe to just one paper. There are so many good articles in all the papers.<p>A news combiner or aggregator would charge me for every article I select. At the end of the month, he charges my account credit card for the sum of all the articles.<p>He gathers up the money that all readers have paid for reading NYT articles, and remits it.<p>The newspapers don't have to manage micro-payments, journalism is saved, everyone is happy.<p>Blendle looks like they are trying to do this, but they've been in Beta since 2016.
Things are much worse at Gannett, parent company of usatoday. Personally, being laid off on March 31! Almost every employee is effected at this time, either furloughed for few hours a week, pay cut or let go !!
There is no point in advertising if no one can buy your product right now. Retailers, dine-in restaurants, movies, hotels, travel, pro sports, big clothing brands, concerts, events, tourism. The list goes on and it is massive. All these industries are huge spenders on advertising.<p>Then there are all the products and services that _could_ be bought, but consumers and companies have pulled back on because of uncertainty. Why waste money on ads for TVs, new phones, SaaS software, hiring, etc?<p>We left our ads running even though conversion rates dropped by 75% because Google offered something like $!00M in ad credits for small businesses. We applied for the program but haven't heard anything. It might be time for us (marketplace for quality contract work) to stop spending on ads too.
I’m definitely in the camp that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease” itself. Sitting in California where there are so few cases makes me wonder if the economic toll is totally worth it. Seems like we’ve used a tsunami to put out a campfire.
I understand modern media is slinging fear and outrage because that's what gets clicks, but their whole business model is anachronistic. I've watched previously reasonable publications go from honest fact-based reporting to pure narrative/agenda based drivel. Like wow, Washington Post, what happened bro?<p>If most media organizations went out of business from the impending COVID economic catastrophe, I think that would be karmic justice. They did their part to cause it after all. The stress they've induced, the fear they've sown; they've earned every bad thing that befalls them.<p>It's time for a new paradigm. Long form journalism as we knew it is gone. But there are other formats ascending. Podcasts, Youtube series, etc are all possibilities to fill the void of in depth reporting. Time will tell if someone can figure it out, but our current media is a problem, not an answer.
In related news I have noticed that most things I search on Google don't show any ads at all. I went hunting for it and found that common household items are showing ads, but other things don't. And most certainly there is no obnoxiousness like an entire page of ads before the content.
Is there a good news site worth paying for today that actually has ALL news. It infuriates me that when I go to CNN.com's "news" site, there are ads at the bottom with things like "Before you review Amazon Prime, read this" and "America's #1 Stock Picker: 'Must buy now'" How can anyone be okay with this?<p>This is like picking up an astronomy journal that has ads in the back for psychics.
I run a website that is monetized via Adsense and I do not see a negative impact of the Corona pandemic.<p>What makes the situation so much different for the L.A. Times then for a website?
I think what is even worse is what recovery looks like. Seems like we are going to be recovering for a very long time. We don't even know how deep the wounds are yet.
We did have a similar Artie and discussion yesterday about how people making videos for/on Google see the viewing skyrocketing and ad-revenue collapsing. Nobody is selling this nobody advertised, plus the (thank you - I haven't thought of this) when crises hit, the ad budget is the first one to get slashed.
Are newspapers going to start selling subscriptions without advertisements and trackers? I would love to pay for one. I recently canceled my subscription to my local paper over the unnecessary tracking: <a href="https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/1247247733133660160" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/1247247733133660160</a>
How might Google and Facebook revenue move? Facebook earnings per share consensus is $1.78. In two weeks, we'll see how it stacks up. <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/fb/earnings" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/fb/earnings</a>
We've already been seeing this to some degree with harder and harder paywalls--which mostly don't work besides lucrative niche and global brands. But I suspect we're increasingly headed towards a case where quality content is only available to those willing and able to pay for it.
Just curious if Google has suffered similar level of revenue damage. If so it would be really bad since they got a hundred thousand people on paycheck.
Dear HN,<p>Support journalism. Subscribe for a month and see how it works for you.<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-evergreen/flyout.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-evergre...</a>
This doesn't matter. Low quality news sources are a dime a dozen, and the good news costs money. You have to be sophisticated enough to be able to differentiate news sources. For instance, as a WSJ subscriber, I'm not going to read the editorials. They're complete garbage in terms of factual content. The business page is gold.<p>And this is very good. All the freeloaders who block ads and only use low-quality news will get poorer information and they will be out-competed. That's a good thing. Humanity will move forward. So block your ads on your ad-supported sources, grumble about "inequity of information", and exclaim in horror that you can't access good information because of a paywall. This is it. The future is here: ads are disappearing (temporarily, I think) and you're seeing what happens when your desired world comes to be.<p>There's no schadenfreude here. Many of you were just sawing on a branch you sat on, with the natural consequence. The LA Times railed against targeted advertising. Well, they got what they wanted. And now they're subject to the razor's edge that is the market.
Not in CA, but our governor is deciding what must close, and even what items stores can sell. I suspect any news outlet (sans politics) would be desired to stay open. But you can't legislate everything.
Idea:<p>Whenever there are furloughs or layoff, any payouts or profits for the C-Suite and managers that are higher the average employee, is put into an annuity for the laid off employees.<p>So if a CEO makes 30,000,000, and the average worker is paid 125,000. A 29,875,000 fund will be made to deposit a monthly check into the bank of the fired employees. This includes any profits made from selling stocks.<p>To avoid loopholes and ensure enforcement, CEO's waive personal financial privacy, giving regulators full access into international finance accounts and to withdraw from those account debt due to workers. The lookback/forward time can be tweaked to go up to 36 months to ensure it's not worked around.<p>This will retain employees - while simultaneously keep businesses operating profitably.<p>Additionally, if there are any dividends by the company, any employees who worked a certain time (even if fired) are entitled to payout, since they're part of the collective. This shows appreciation for the employees which boosts performance - they know a successful quarter will have their success kept - not given only to investors.