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Comment by icxa | Hacker News Reader

Maybe they could take a gut check and realize that we might be faced with the grim reality that in the era of twitter and instant news via social media, we don't need these old establishment media orgs anymore. The fact that they all have to result to these tactics of hosting (and producing) click bait articles, as well as their numerous other dark patterns they employ on their sites, paywalls, etc, should show to their board or leadership that maybe the demand for their product just isn't there anymore. There's nothing that says "CNN", "NYT", et all need to be legacy multi-century businesses. It's how it goes in this country. How many businesses from 100 years ago are around today? Nothing wrong with it, it's just the circle of business life.

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The commodity information you get from social media is not the same thing as investigative reporting that takes months of research, public records requests, shoe leather reporting, data analysis and interviews to uncover corruption in government, abuses of power, regulatory loopholes etc. Twitter does not fill the role of the forth estate and society would not be better off without it. It's easy to take it for granted when you get all of the benefits without bearing any of the costs.

My question is then, has society dumbed down so much from the ADD nature of the internet and ubiquitous computing, that traditional long-form sources of news media are no longer relevant for the ways people choose to consume them? e.g. news channels posting bite sized stories via snapchat stories feed, etc.

It's still relevant. Lots of people still want the traditional long form, it's just that the old business model for delivering it doesn't work anymore, and people (reasonably) don't understand why they should pay for something that used to be free. And yes, snapchat (etc) stories are an interesting delivery channel, and we're trying that too (although again, how to monetize that).

Also how is a paywall a "dark pattern"? If you don't care to consume the content, don't subscribe, it's very straightforward. And there is demand. People want the product they just don't want to pay for it, because the internet. If you want the content but don't want a paywall you don't get to complain about which ads are subsidizing your access.

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