Posts by pohutukawa tree
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Newspapers anywhere that have moved online in an effort to survive all face the same order of magnitude reduction in revenue, and what they do receive invariably needs to be shared with online partners.
Gone are the days where they owned the bridge between advertisers and news on the one hand, and the audience on the other, extracting a handsome toll from all who passed.
Over time they became lazy and greedy. They stopped caring about journalism, and allowed themselves to be corrupted by advertorial, donating to political parties to drive regulation in directions beneficial to them, etc.
Further, in exchange for access to politicians and other sources of information, leaks, comment, etc., they became hopelessly invested in the mainstream media model of echo-chamber syndicated journalism, consecutively relaying depressing and sensationalist stories from far and wide, with increased circulation in mind, armed with which they could increase their demands from advertiser budgets.
Then they were caught flat-footed by Trademe and the external forces changing their business model.
Their only choices are closing down, going Daily Mail, as you say, or embarking on the Hive News model, and actually going back to the beginning again and focusing on quality of product.
Given the choice, people won't pay for crap: advertorial, regurgitated meh from everywhere, lightweight analysis, etc.
What they may pay for is something relevant that has been carefully, thoughtfully and competently composed. The challenge there is to connect with the right audience and convince them that the publisher actually cares.