Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I’ll just be over here, pouring one out for all the great projects
built with Flash.
  

    
I bought that coolaid, too, <mazz>, to my ongoing chagrin (and lots
of no-longer-accessible Flash environments).
  

    

>  Then, when I submitted my first budget in 1995, it had $15K set aside for
>  "unknown good thing."  They went along with that too, some remarking that
>  this was the first time they authorized money for something unknown. The
>  money was used to experiment with then-emerging web-ready cams, digital
>  photos and audio.

I love the name you gave that item! And I'm glad they agreed to it.

Was KRON still an NBC affiliate at that time?


> "newspaper people self-select for introverts and television people self-
> select for extroverts."

Makes sense!
  

    

Every time a non-subscriber fires up Wordle they get a pitch to
subscribe to NYT, which provides access to an attractive looking
array of Wordle add ons.   I bet the 300,000 new subscribers in Q4
last year include a whole lot of Wordle players.
  

    
Yes they were an NBC affiliate until after it was sold by the
Chronicle Publishing Company.  In 1997 I went to the National
Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.  There at a big
NBC rollout they aggressively pushed on all their affiliates their
future "best-of-breed" everything (which you may recall ended up
with their buying an office building in downtown SF and then
ultimately coming to naught). The President of NBC TV at the time,
Neil Braun, came to SF to see if we would change and go with their
NBC web offering.  I told him no because what they had was not good
enough. And it wasn't, not nearly.  We ended with him asking if at
least we would put an NBC Peacock with a link on our site. We did do
that, on the KRON page.
  

    
I am still hoping for the micropayments envisioned in the 1990's. 

There are SO many interesting sites and SO many interesting writers,
and when every interesting writer wants $5.00/mo or 'the cost of a
cup of coffee a day' it starts adding up to gallons and gallons. And
then I have to ask myself how many of these wonderful long serious
writers I can actually read in a month. And it's almost never worth
paying a yearly subscription to a magazine when you just want to
read one column.  

The net effect may be that the most popular get all the subscribers
and the smaller ones go under. But with micropayments, instead of
non-subscribers being stopped by "Are you enjoying this story? To
keep reading, sign in as a subscriber" the button could say "Are you
enjoying this story? To keep reading,  pay $0.05 to support us."  I
know my coffee money would be spread over many more sources. 
  

    
Post.new has a points system for reading stuff. I don't know how I get the
points but I spend 'em over there. I hope it helps.
  

    
With micropayments there could also be a scale. Clickbait  might be
a penny, but a long well-researched article could be $5 or even more
(and even applied to the cost of your annual subscription perhaps?)

A lot of people would have to do this for it to be cost-effective.
But if a few large providers got involved, it could start to spread.

 
  

    
Musicians make very little money from streaming, because the site
providers take nearly all of it. I wonder how we could organize that
differently for writers.
  

    
Payments by streaming services are micropayments, or maybe they're
more properly nanopayments. The payouts to content owners are way
too small because the services have all the power.
  

    
Yep.
  

    

This just in from Jay Rosen:

<https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1756114551781683632>

"News companies are reversing course on hard subscriptions - once seen as a
safer alternative to the volatile ad market - in favor of flexible
paywalls, membership programs and more ads."

<https://axios.com/2024/02/06/great-subscription-news-reversal>

Subscription is a tough, tough business. So is digital advertising.
  

    

<https://axios.com/2024/02/06/great-subscription-news-reversal>

The big picture: A strategy focused mainly on subscriptions requires
upfront spending on premium content. That takes time to pay off —
and many publishers don't have the cushion for that in the current
ad slowdown.

At the same time, many outlets have learned that simply throwing a
paywall up over your previously free content doesn't work either. It
throttles ad revenue without capturing enough new subscribers.
  

    
Micropayments, dammit

lemme throw the newsboy a dime so I can read all about it.
  

    

  let a thousand payment schemes bloom!
  

    
Someone must be doing actual work on micropayments. Where are they?
  

    
Have a look at:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/micropayment.asp

one key item:

> ... many business owners and e-commerce sites have issues finding a
> credit card processor as the fee for processing transactions may be more
> than the micropayment.

The transaction cost to send US $0.50 needs to be a lot less than US $0.50
for it to work well.

I believe that the key to widespread use of micropayments (if ever) is to
have a ultra-low-cost way to handle the actual transactions, refunds,
verification, etc.

The currency that people might spead via micropayments is always held in some
kind of trusted digital system such as a bank or perhaps a crypto-currency
custodian.

Micropayments involves having a secure way to move currency between these
systems as very high volume and very low cost per transaction. It is an
entirely new type of infrastructure still very much in its infancy.
  

    

Sounds like we might need a public utility as opposed to a for-profit entity
to handle that?
  

    
Sort of like the BBC? 

I would use micropayments too, and it's disheartening to learn how
many barriers there are to what seems like it should be a simple
process. 

Meanwhile, I report with no pleasure that Rebecca Solnit announced
today on Twitter that she is canceling her NYT subscription because
she finds its coverage (not just the opinion columnists) biased in
favor of Trump. 
  

    
That's just sad. I understand people feeling stressed by the
polarization in this country, but blaming the mainstream media - and
instead turning to media that panders to you - just makes the
problem worse. 

If she really feels as though she has a case to make, I think she
should make it. Maybe she can help make the paper better.

But just quitting implies that the problem is hopeless corruption,
not correctable mistakes. And that's what makes the problem worse.
  

    
The Nieman Lab has published a two-part series on the challenges
facing small non-profit newsrooms that is worth a look:
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/many-small-news-nonprofits-feel-overlooked-b
y-funders-a-new-coalition-is-giving-them-a-voice/
  

    
In my view Solnit is correct in her take about the NYT.  They coast
on their "paper of record" reputation while putting their thumb on
the political scale way too often for my taste.  What galls me the
most about them is how they constantly present themselves as
unbiased.  Not so.
  

    

The Solnit news makes me sad. I don't like the way the opinion side piles on
to every controversy about Biden, and I think the political reporting should
be improved greatly. But you stay, criticize, and demand better. I was
pleased to see the top of the web page today was about Trump's NATO madness,
with any age stuff below. I'd like to see them continue to make better
choices.
  

    
Thank you Paula for the link to the NiemanLab article - very helpful.
  

    
That's a really hard get for me tex.  The idea that what I really do have 
framed in my head as the paper of record, is run by people who either don't 
see Trump for the existential danger he is to the republic, or who don't 
care.  I'm only now admitting it to myself.