Publishers pushing to get paid for news
NEW YORK — For years, news outlets promoted their work on various online platforms, hoping to bring readers and advertisers back to their own websites.
But the ad dollars have largely flowed to Facebook and Google. Now, as they head into 2020, embattled publishers are hoping to turn the tables on tech platforms that have profited from their work — by getting them to pay for stories.
So far, the amount of money flowing back to newsrooms is still relatively small, but media executives are encouraged by what they say is a willingness to pay for news in some corners of the tech industry.
“It’s a positive trend we’re seeing from the platforms,” said Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.
The most prominent example is Facebook Inc., which unveiled a separate news section in October and agreed to pay for articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other media companies. Some publishers are getting $1 million to $3 million a year.
Facebook joins a diverse group of startups that need news articles to attract users, and are cutting checks for them.
Hosting stories
Pocket, an ad-supported app owned by Mozilla Corp., struck a deal with the Atlantic and is talking to other publishers about paying to host older stories. The Pocket app is best known for letting people save content to read later. But it also recommends articles and is testing whether stories published months or years ago can enjoy a second life.
Since 2017, Medium, a digital publishing company, has paid about a dozen publications to share a handful of articles. Medium, which is led by Twitter Inc. co-founder Ev Williams, charges $5 a month for a subscription and is considering paying more news outlets for their stories.
SmartNews Inc., a news app founded in Japan in 2012, is paying for the rights to stories from the British Broadcasting Corp., BuzzFeed, HuffPost and others. The company, which debuted in the U.S. in 2014, has grown to about 20 million users and hosts some articles directly on its app.
Getting paid
“As much as publishers like traffic, I think they like getting checks even more,” said Rich Jaroslovsky, vice president of content at SmartNews and a former Bloomberg News employee.
So far, with the exception of Facebook, the payments aren’t large enough to be significant, media executives say. According to one publisher, Medium is paying less than $100,000 a year. But others are getting more. SmartNews, which pays based on how popular the articles are, is offering sums ranging “from high five figures to over six figures” annually, according to Digiday.
One big question is whether Apple Inc. and Google will follow suit and start paying for news like Facebook.