[zmitri]

I had a startup that tried something like this.

Initially we went with a similar membership concept, except people subscribed to one writer directly, and got access to the collective. It barely worked, and we moved over to more of a crowdfunding model which was about 100x more effective.

In the end we worked with major publications and hundreds of journalists, had a million dollar matching fund program, and paid out millions of dollars to writers directly, but it still didn't work as a big business.

This makes me think Medium is pretty clueless about what they are getting into - especially after raising more than $100 million.

[thedarkginger]

Have always been interested in why few startups try to do this. "Netflix for journalism" seems like such a low hanging fruit pitch, at least to get funding that you'd think more folks would have at least tried.

After moving to the crowdfunding model, what was the primary problem? Were the unit economics not conducive to retaining good writers who would attract readers, or conversely was there no way to sustain a margin for the platform?

[CM30]

The problem is the same one that Medium will likely soon find out.

The news market is a heavily competitive one, with hundreds of sites offering everything for free with ads. As a result, most people just don't see the need to pay for news. They can find the exact same information in a million other places, and the friction from going from 'free with ads' to 'pay for content' is fairly considerable.

It's like trying to sell a smartphone app. The pressures against it are considerable due to the race to the bottom and a large percentage of people just don't see the point in paying.

So it's a business that's hard to build trust in, requires a decent amount of marketing/awareness, will attract a far smaller audience than the free sites and ends up being a difficult one to monetise properly.

[thedarkginger]

Totally agree. The only advantage I could see them working is being able to act as a central platform for paid outlets.

Digital subscriptions (NY Times, Washington Post) have seen a boost since the election in the U.S., but does anyone pay for multiple subscriptions? It's frustrating - even as someone who really wants to support media - that each outlet has their own barrier.

This is so different from how we consume other media (video: Amazon Prime, HBO, Netflix; music: Spotify, Apple Music) where I can get access to a library and it makes the tradeoff with finding a free version online easier to deal with.

To my knowledge, major publishers have never tried this and they instead are caught in the digital impression arbitrage game.

Admittedly, Medium doesn't have those publishers on board but I do think that's an angle the market has not tested/figured out.

[brandnewlow]

Relatively few people need to read news enough to pay for it.

[timae]

What was it called?

[zmitri]

Beacon, although many called it Beacon Reader.

[gault8121]

Too bad to see that Beacon shut down. With Trump's election, this might have been a prime moment for community-funded journalism.

[zmitri]

Sadly, I don't think it would have really helped. And I'm not saying that lightly.