Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Heck, Metro is printed and it's free...
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Because Metro is a toilet rag news tabloid good for reading for 5 minutes on the train or bus and nothing else. It's all brief recycled news stories you see on the front page of google and gossip and recipes, etc. Metro makes money hand over fist globally because it has made itself available to commuters all over the world thus finding a captive audience (people waiting or stuck on trains and buses all over the world).
You aren't going to find lenghty indepth investigative journalism or deep stories in there. It's a completely different beast. But I admit, I read it everyday since I have nothing better to do on the C-Train.
Current online advertising models don't work. Do you ever notice the ads on the sides of pages? No, your mind has grown to block them out. Metro makes money because people still read ads they see in print papers. You have a captive audience trapped on transit that HAS to read your paper and can't navigate away to some other website instantly. Did you know Youtube loses about $2 million dollars A DAY? Google is propping it up with cash daily. Online advertising doesn't work the way it currently is. The economy is bad, but internet advertising wasn't helping the NYT as much as you think it did. Advertisers are wising up and realizing that people don't pay attention to ads as they currently are. Even before the economy went bad, they were paying less and less. Even if large papers like the NYT survives (barely), individual papers and other publications are very likely to go under.