Reader’s Willingness-to-pay

For medium-price journalism, mass readers have two types of willingness-to-pay:

  1. Willingness-to-pay for leisure (magazine)
  2. Willingness-to-pay to stay informed (newspaper)

Reselling Business

The medium-price journalism was a reselling business:

  • The top magazines and newspapers used to pay their best writers a dollar per word, to purchase the lucrative reselling power of making a profit of three dollars per word.
  • The competition at medium-price was about quality, so well-written, long-form journalism were compensated well.

Unprofitable

Medium-price journalism has become unprofitable since 2020s:

  1. When TikTok/YouTube offers more personalized leisure for free, mass readers’ willingness-to-pay to pay magazine for leisure is ruined
  2. When Reddit/Instagram offers more personalized timeliness for free, mass readers’ willingness-to-pay to pay newspaper to stay informed is ruined,

Polarization

Medium-price journalism has two options, either go downscale towards TikTok (ultra low-price journalism), or upscale towards elite clubs (luxury journalism). 1

  • National Geographies chose to transform itself into ultra low-price journalism 2. They laid all staff off and recruited freelancers to lower the costs. And they adopt a “short-and-shallow” guidelines to make their contents easier to consume.
  • Axios decided to transform itself into luxury journalism 3. They treat key editors like limited partners, hold offline events, like summits and podcasts, to connect executives, insiders, and opportunities with each other.

  1. Members Only: Elite Clubs and The Process of Exclusion: https://www.amazon.com/Members-Only-Elite-Process-Exclusion/dp/0742545563 ↩︎

  2. The Death of the Magazine: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-death-of-the-magazine ↩︎

  3. Axios Pro: https://www.axios.com/pro/offer ↩︎