Developers cost a lot more than typographers and delivery boys and you need a lot of them to run a modern online media. A developer on staff is sort of like a subscription that the newspaper pays.
The way to bring back advertisement to newspapers is to use antitrust rules and to start taxing search engines and social networks. When Facebook or Google runs an ad for my local gym, it is taxed in some remote tropical island (where it's usually not taxed at all). When my local newspaper runs the same ad, it's taxed locally. Basically, where I see the ad.
I don't like advertisement in newspapers more than the next guy but that was how our democracy worked. News media got paid. With that money they could do journalism. Now, most of that money goes to a handful of companies that do very little to keep a check on politicians.
Developers may cost more, but you only need a handful of them for a set period of time and you can build a very simple platform if you don't chase fads (no SPA, no Kubernetes/microservices, no overpriced cloud providers). That is a one-time cost vs ongoing cost of delivery for a physical paper.
There was a submission on here recently about how Remoteok.io runs on a PHP and jQuery (and a very small server behind it according to the comments) and manages to bring around 40k/month.
This would of course be true for any software development if we programmers could do real magic and create perfect software.
I assure you (given that I used to work for one of the largest news organisations in Sweden) that there is no such thing as a simple platform when it comes to news. Sure on the front it is "just" a website.
Then of course there is the subscription backends, the systems that calculate how many print papers to send to _each_ little store in the whole country, the system that people write in (regardless if you write your own you still have to have it interface with your backend, and don't forget you need to have a way for your person on the fronline in syria to publish as well), many organisations now have video which is another whole beast. Etc, etc.
Now you might not like it and just want to have just text (I'm many ways I'm with you there) but it's a lot more to having a digital newspaper than you might imagine.
> Developers cost a lot more than typographers and delivery boys and you need a lot of them to run a modern online media. A developer on staff is sort of like a subscription that the newspaper pays.
That's quite amazing. Then what was the whole point of going online (broadly speaking), if not to decrease delivery cost of articles?
> Then what was the whole point of going online (broadly speaking), if not to decrease delivery cost of articles?
To chase the audience that had gone online. The newspapers were loosing customers to other sites that could produce articles cheaply themselves or republish newswire stories or rely on content from users and didn't have the overhead of a traditional newspaper
No I’m saying people aren’t buying print newspapers. There’s 30% less than in 2000 and the revenue of the remaining has dropped off a cliff.
The surviving papers have moved online to find new customers and some have got rid of print version altogether.
Why would I read online news when I can just have information streamed directly into my consciousness with a brain implant?
Why would I read the newspaper that comes in a few weeks when I can get instant information online?
Why would I wait for the town crier to come through in a few days when I can get instant information from this "news-paper"
Why would I wait until Sunday afternoon at the cathedral to get the town news when we're all assembled together in the middle ages when the town crier is coming past later this week?
You only need a lot of developers if you are trying to do sophisticated things with tracking, engagement, etc. A basic WordPress install doesn't require a team of developers to run full-time and that's the equivalent of a printed paper.
I suspect that this isn't a popular viewpoint given that a significant portion of the reading population's livelihood is based on believing differently.
You know, since the early 2000s, every single newspaper also had an online presence while delivering their paper. It's literally text and pictures on a screen, not software applications - at least it used to be like that.
Have you got a source for the claim about developer costs? It seems believable, but I don’t think many media companies publish detailed information about their labour costs, and I also expect a huge difference between eg. local news and global mastheads with scaling issues.
The way to bring back advertisement to newspapers is to use antitrust rules and to start taxing search engines and social networks. When Facebook or Google runs an ad for my local gym, it is taxed in some remote tropical island (where it's usually not taxed at all). When my local newspaper runs the same ad, it's taxed locally. Basically, where I see the ad.
I don't like advertisement in newspapers more than the next guy but that was how our democracy worked. News media got paid. With that money they could do journalism. Now, most of that money goes to a handful of companies that do very little to keep a check on politicians.