Entry Market

Our goals demand Very Good Content Sorting
TOUGH —- a tough entry market – Nonfiction

The deep emotional politics of the last two years (Ukraine, USA 2020 election disputes, Warming, Covid)

EASIER —- an easier entry market – Fiction & Arts (written/video/audio)

Test the arts and entertainment side of things.

May help us avoid some angry debates (politics is tough this year)

Test arts reviews (film, TV, music, live shows). These need strong curation also.

Test comic strips — partners from the comic syndication services

Rivals – news giants

The news giants/the Big 50 (PEW) create their own content, do not need to filter it, and have less of a bubble effect. Many buy and sell syndicated content. They are solid rivals, for readers, but not direct rivals.

They have a traditional role, and may continue to have little interest in many things we do, and little reason to change.

We serve small papers. They see them as rivals.
We donate. Most of them do not have strong nonprofit sides.
We are a service on many sites. They have not done that, and it does not fit their brand to serve other sites.
We do not see our role as helping ad targeting, but the largest papers still do well with ads, and use strong ad targeting for online products. This means they are not rivals in the “strong privacy market”.

Rivals – social media giants

ANGER FEEDS SOME SOCIAL SITES WE ADD A KINDER VERSION OF NEWS
Facebook, and others, make money by creating bubbles and ad-targeting. (Pain and anger draw eyes. More eyes mean more ads. Sites with more anger – hate speech, polarized stories – sell more ads, the main source of money.
Meaner editing or simply less editing makes money, and some readers get a strong hunger for all this anger.

Newspaper market, for fifty years

News biz DOWN (revenue + subscribers/ since mid-2000s)
website traffic UP
UP both BIG 50 Newspapers /and the larger pure digital news
DOWN total newspaper revenues

Total revenues down — subscriptions FLAT/ads DOWN

This market weakness in ads helps us trust our “no ads/ not social” branding. We do help subscriptions. We can help ads (e.g. by pairing an ad with a piece of content, vs. targeting it to a reader.

We see a strong place for site or item sponsors, and other donors.

Newspaper revenues

(ad revenue + circulation revenue)

2020 was the first year that circulation revenue TOPS ad revenue
Ad revenue DROPS 2005-2020
Circ revenue FLAT 1995-2020

(we like this – we expect to gain from stronger circulation revenue)

B is “billion dollars”

Year	Advertising Revenue	Circulation revenue	TOTAL Revenue
1965	$4.4 B	$2 B	6.4 B
1975	$8.2 B	$3.9 B	12.1 B
1985	$25 B	$7.7 B	32.8 B
1995	$36 B	$9.7 B	45.8 B
2000	$48.7 B	$10.5 B	59.2 B
2005	49.4 B	$10.7 B	60.1 B
2010	$25.8 B	$10 B	35.8 B
2020	9.6 B	$11 B	20.6 B