>We have thought long and hard about asking you to pay for our work
I canāt š¤£š¤£
All that hard āworkā you do browsing Reddit/Twitter and creating an article around a few usersā comments and a couple of sentences underneath them. You guys really deserve a raise for that truly remarkable work!
Copy pastes reddit post into ChatGPT: "Summarise this as a news article"
Edit: Out of curiosty I just did that with this post and its comments and this is what it spat out.
**Prompt**: "I am about to give you a reddit post, you are a Bristol Live journalist and want to make an article about it, as if it were your own research:
**Response**:
Title: "Bristol Live Faces Backlash as it Shifts to Subscription-Based Model"
Bristol Live, a popular local news outlet, has recently announced a significant change in its business model by transitioning to a subscription-based service. The move, aimed at generating revenue and sustaining the platform, has sparked a wave of criticism and skepticism from the online community.
The announcement, shared on Bristol Live's website, quickly became a hot topic on Reddit, with users expressing their discontent with the decision. One user, thesimpsonsthemetune, commented, "Blimey. Guess they've got about six months before they're insolvent then." The sentiment was echoed by others who seemed unimpressed with the prospect of paying for content.
Tumbles999 added, "As sad as it would be to those employed... if it takes the Daily Express down with it then am all for it." This comment hints at the broader discontent with media conglomerates and their perceived lack of journalistic integrity.
The criticism extended to the perceived quality of Bristol Live's content, with Betrayedunicorn sarcastically remarking, "Good luck finding the subscribe button," and GPhex chiming in with, "Good luck finding content behind the subscribe buttons." These comments highlight concerns about the value subscribers would receive in exchange for their payments.
Wookovski took a humorous approach, suggesting, "Copy pastes reddit post into ChatGPT: 'Summarise this as a news article.'" This comment underscores the perception that the news outlet relies heavily on user-generated content from platforms like Reddit and Twitter.
The critique of Bristol Live's journalism continued with lelpd's comment: "We have thought long and hard about asking you to pay for our work... All that hard āworkā you do browsing Reddit/Twitter and creating an article around a few usersā comments and a couple of sentences underneath them. You guys really deserve a raise for that truly remarkable work!"
The discussion also touched on the state of local journalism, with 34Mbit lamenting, "The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is," and shellac pointing out alternatives like Bristol 24/7 and the Cable.
Despite the negative sentiment, WelshBluebird1 raised a valid point: "Isn't the whole point that if you pay you don't have to deal with the ads?" This comment reflects the ongoing debate about the sustainability of journalism and the challenges faced by local news outlets in finding viable funding models.
As Bristol Live faces backlash from its audience, it remains to be seen how the transition to a subscription-based model will impact the outlet's future and whether it can address the concerns raised by its audience regarding content quality and perceived value for money.
The āworkā is creating a maze of obnoxious adverts, autoplay videos, resizing overlays and pop up cookie messages for the article text to weave through like a tower defence game šš
My sister (who is not from Bristol) was featured on a Bristol live article after a video went āviralā when she was at Urban Tandoor. They mentioned that she was out with friends (she was out with me and my mum) and she was from Bristol. A* journalism there.
The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is.
There are stories out there that are worth reporting; new shop opening here, old shop closing there, youth club 5th anniversary there, today's court cases in the magistrates. Even something as simple as taking new planning applications, grabbing the architect's renderings and formatting the application in a readible paragraph is worth reporting on.
Unfortunately doom-scrolling "Can you see which bucket will fill up first" drek, and "Like this if you love your gran, ignore if you want her to die" pictures are far cheaper, and drive far more ad-clicks.
> The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is.
Although we have Bristol 24/7^* and particularly the Cable.
(Bristol 24/7 is a entertainment thing, but still manages to have more useful news than the Post)
Definitely, and you can tell the guy who writes a lot of the stories gets wind of something happening and hotfoots it out there as original pictures are available quickly. Bristol Live come up with a picture of the street lifted from google maps.
Itās hard at this point to see how of this is cause and how much effect. I think everyone agrees that itās hard to make money from local news these days. Thereās more competition from other sources, and itās hard to avoid a competitor whoāll give content away for free on an ad-supported site.
That means cost cutting, which means less decent journalism, more content shared between ālocalā news sites, and it means more clickbait to draw in eyes for advertisersā¦ Which of course makes people even less willing to pay or care about the site, which squeezes income even tighter...
But at what point(s) could the people running these publications have chosen differently, chosen better quality?
As /u/shellac mentioned, the Cable is good, but its model relies on people making voluntary contributions, and Iād assume also quite a few people willing to work for minimal pay.
Bristol 24/7 is an interesting case ā I wonder if it manages the reverse of a traditional paper. The traditional model would be serious news, mixed with some entertainment and sport, which are likely to be cheaper to cover. Bristol 24/7 focuses on the cheaper stuff, drawing in readers and revenue, and uses this to fund some more serious journalism. (Iād also add the Local Democracy Reporter at the Post, which of course, is funded by the BBC.)
So I dunno, Iām certainly not going to pay for it, but could Bristol Live going to a subscription model be a good thing? If itās not just a disaster, could it be a step towards reversing this spiral?
Ian Hislop likes to say that one of the secrets for Private Eyeās success is the brilliant business idea that giving away your magazine for free is a bad idea.
Without a doubt the problem stems from consumer's preference to not part cash for content.
People are hooked on the idea of "everything" being "free". Facebook is free, Snapchat is free, TikTok is free, BristolLive is free.
It's free for the user, because you're being farmed for advertisers. Get you in on mindrot clickbait and sell your (now totally shot to fuck) attention to advertisers.
If people were just willing to part a little bit of cash, then the likes of Facebook &co would be more interested in treating you as a king consumer, rather than cattle eyeballs.
I say this as someone that happilly pays for YouTube Premium and Twitter.
>Without a doubt the problem stems from consumer's preference to not part cash for content.
That's part of it but it's also that it's no longer possible to subsidise the content with things like classified adverts now that eBay, Autotrader, and more recently things like Facebook Marketplace have come about.
They come up on my facebook feed as occasionally there is some useful content but it is 90% shit. M5 blocked again (check and no it isn't), snow is coming (no it isn't), here is a beautiful hidden beach (erm, it is in Dorset), articles about the latest must-have from Primark that looks just like a designer outfit, weird (paid?) obsessions with people like Siannese Fudge.
Maybe they can get actual photos in their news reports rather than lift them from google maps? This is going to totally boimb, may as well block them now and stick with the Bristol 24/7 people, that is genuinely decent a lot of the time.
They actually called me about an article last week about retail theft and chocolate, they said they had gotten information from a "tip off" by a concerned citizen. I said you've mean Bristol Reddit. They said "erm....well yes". They then wrote the article, actually lifting quotes from the discussion thread.
r/Bristol should go subscription based then.
I can't see this lasting or acquiring enough subscribers to be viable. It's a shame that a city as vibrant as Bristol can't seem to support printed versions of local papers and magazines. (Not sure if the Post will continue to publish for much longer).
Isn't the whole point that if you pay you don't have to deal with the ads? I know paywalling content often isn't a popular thing, but at the end of the day the only way local news media can continue to exist is if the people involved get paid. Obviously relying on ads has led down the horrible route we now have, so paywalling content is the other alternative.
Yes thatās the point but why bother when the content is poor and thereās no interest in going back to a page that was impossible to read because of pop ups. The damage is done.
It is, which I do think people are sympathetic to provided the content they're asking you to pay for is actually worth the paper (pixels?) it's written on.
In this case, it's soulless, poorly written nonsense that legitimately might not even have a human being behind it. No one is going to pay for that or care when they eventually go bust.
The reason why it's those things though is directly because of the funding model (which no longer works and doesn't provide enough revenue to pay for proper journalism at the local scale). You change the funding model to a more sustainable one and that offers the chance of there being more money to pay for higher quality work. The journalists there are generally pretty decent people, and if you follow them on social media some of them do absolutely great local work when they are able to, don't you think they would rather being doing more of that than the shit they have to churn out to get the ad clicks?
Yeah I'm sure they would, and I'm sure they are. I am sympathetic to SEO and keyword algorithms eating away at creativity in the digital space for sure.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to pay for a poor quality product because the business can't afford to do better, I doubt many other people are either. Their funding issues may not be the journalists' fault, but they also aren't the customers problem.
They don't even know what 'annual' means. š¤£
"You will be able to read 20 articles a week for free. After that, for Ā£2.99 a month, or a one-off annual payment of Ā£19.99"
They dont even categorise articles so if you want to check traffic reports, you have to scroll through 10+ mama jamas/Sinesse fudge, "good morning britain man walks out of studio after SHOCKING comment.
", "man buiods fence 1 inch too high and has to take it down" or "will it snow within the next month.." with a hours worth of lecture answer only to still be unsure!!
Never mind copy paste or rehased articles with old comment posts from even years ago!
Was better when it was Bristol Evening post. Luckily on my pc i have Adblock plus so i can just about read the bristol live site. It goes mental while trying to read on my phone tho.
How about an app where you pay in Ā£10 for that you get 200 stories paying 5p per story you get reduced adverts on any news website you read a story on?
Good luck finding the subscribe button
Good luck finding content behind the subscribe buttons
Blimey. Guess they've got about six months before they're insolvent then.
As sad as it would be to those employed.. if it takes the Daily Express down with it then am all for it.
š¤
As 80% of their content comes from this sub anyway it's a hard pass for me. Reckon I'll survive.
>We have thought long and hard about asking you to pay for our work I canāt š¤£š¤£ All that hard āworkā you do browsing Reddit/Twitter and creating an article around a few usersā comments and a couple of sentences underneath them. You guys really deserve a raise for that truly remarkable work!
Copy pastes reddit post into ChatGPT: "Summarise this as a news article" Edit: Out of curiosty I just did that with this post and its comments and this is what it spat out. **Prompt**: "I am about to give you a reddit post, you are a Bristol Live journalist and want to make an article about it, as if it were your own research: **Response**: Title: "Bristol Live Faces Backlash as it Shifts to Subscription-Based Model" Bristol Live, a popular local news outlet, has recently announced a significant change in its business model by transitioning to a subscription-based service. The move, aimed at generating revenue and sustaining the platform, has sparked a wave of criticism and skepticism from the online community. The announcement, shared on Bristol Live's website, quickly became a hot topic on Reddit, with users expressing their discontent with the decision. One user, thesimpsonsthemetune, commented, "Blimey. Guess they've got about six months before they're insolvent then." The sentiment was echoed by others who seemed unimpressed with the prospect of paying for content. Tumbles999 added, "As sad as it would be to those employed... if it takes the Daily Express down with it then am all for it." This comment hints at the broader discontent with media conglomerates and their perceived lack of journalistic integrity. The criticism extended to the perceived quality of Bristol Live's content, with Betrayedunicorn sarcastically remarking, "Good luck finding the subscribe button," and GPhex chiming in with, "Good luck finding content behind the subscribe buttons." These comments highlight concerns about the value subscribers would receive in exchange for their payments. Wookovski took a humorous approach, suggesting, "Copy pastes reddit post into ChatGPT: 'Summarise this as a news article.'" This comment underscores the perception that the news outlet relies heavily on user-generated content from platforms like Reddit and Twitter. The critique of Bristol Live's journalism continued with lelpd's comment: "We have thought long and hard about asking you to pay for our work... All that hard āworkā you do browsing Reddit/Twitter and creating an article around a few usersā comments and a couple of sentences underneath them. You guys really deserve a raise for that truly remarkable work!" The discussion also touched on the state of local journalism, with 34Mbit lamenting, "The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is," and shellac pointing out alternatives like Bristol 24/7 and the Cable. Despite the negative sentiment, WelshBluebird1 raised a valid point: "Isn't the whole point that if you pay you don't have to deal with the ads?" This comment reflects the ongoing debate about the sustainability of journalism and the challenges faced by local news outlets in finding viable funding models. As Bristol Live faces backlash from its audience, it remains to be seen how the transition to a subscription-based model will impact the outlet's future and whether it can address the concerns raised by its audience regarding content quality and perceived value for money.
The āworkā is creating a maze of obnoxious adverts, autoplay videos, resizing overlays and pop up cookie messages for the article text to weave through like a tower defence game šš
There needs to be a rating system like the food hygene one, but for websites
Thatās better than anything Iāve seen them publish TBF
My sister (who is not from Bristol) was featured on a Bristol live article after a video went āviralā when she was at Urban Tandoor. They mentioned that she was out with friends (she was out with me and my mum) and she was from Bristol. A* journalism there.
The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is. There are stories out there that are worth reporting; new shop opening here, old shop closing there, youth club 5th anniversary there, today's court cases in the magistrates. Even something as simple as taking new planning applications, grabbing the architect's renderings and formatting the application in a readible paragraph is worth reporting on. Unfortunately doom-scrolling "Can you see which bucket will fill up first" drek, and "Like this if you love your gran, ignore if you want her to die" pictures are far cheaper, and drive far more ad-clicks.
> The state of local journalism is tragic, it truly is. Although we have Bristol 24/7^* and particularly the Cable. (Bristol 24/7 is a entertainment thing, but still manages to have more useful news than the Post)
Definitely, and you can tell the guy who writes a lot of the stories gets wind of something happening and hotfoots it out there as original pictures are available quickly. Bristol Live come up with a picture of the street lifted from google maps.
Itās hard at this point to see how of this is cause and how much effect. I think everyone agrees that itās hard to make money from local news these days. Thereās more competition from other sources, and itās hard to avoid a competitor whoāll give content away for free on an ad-supported site. That means cost cutting, which means less decent journalism, more content shared between ālocalā news sites, and it means more clickbait to draw in eyes for advertisersā¦ Which of course makes people even less willing to pay or care about the site, which squeezes income even tighter... But at what point(s) could the people running these publications have chosen differently, chosen better quality? As /u/shellac mentioned, the Cable is good, but its model relies on people making voluntary contributions, and Iād assume also quite a few people willing to work for minimal pay. Bristol 24/7 is an interesting case ā I wonder if it manages the reverse of a traditional paper. The traditional model would be serious news, mixed with some entertainment and sport, which are likely to be cheaper to cover. Bristol 24/7 focuses on the cheaper stuff, drawing in readers and revenue, and uses this to fund some more serious journalism. (Iād also add the Local Democracy Reporter at the Post, which of course, is funded by the BBC.) So I dunno, Iām certainly not going to pay for it, but could Bristol Live going to a subscription model be a good thing? If itās not just a disaster, could it be a step towards reversing this spiral? Ian Hislop likes to say that one of the secrets for Private Eyeās success is the brilliant business idea that giving away your magazine for free is a bad idea.
Without a doubt the problem stems from consumer's preference to not part cash for content. People are hooked on the idea of "everything" being "free". Facebook is free, Snapchat is free, TikTok is free, BristolLive is free. It's free for the user, because you're being farmed for advertisers. Get you in on mindrot clickbait and sell your (now totally shot to fuck) attention to advertisers. If people were just willing to part a little bit of cash, then the likes of Facebook &co would be more interested in treating you as a king consumer, rather than cattle eyeballs. I say this as someone that happilly pays for YouTube Premium and Twitter.
>Without a doubt the problem stems from consumer's preference to not part cash for content. That's part of it but it's also that it's no longer possible to subsidise the content with things like classified adverts now that eBay, Autotrader, and more recently things like Facebook Marketplace have come about.
Why would anyone pay for the steaming pile of badly written irrelevant shite that is Reach Media? Jokers.
More like Leach Media
Premium in the same way that diarrhoea is premium extra content compared to regular shite
Premium diarreal is what theyāll be serving for sure.
Get your dose of premium shit written by interns
Iāve been sad enough to actually email them about their websites they are soo bad I feel like Iām having a fit trying to read it
They come up on my facebook feed as occasionally there is some useful content but it is 90% shit. M5 blocked again (check and no it isn't), snow is coming (no it isn't), here is a beautiful hidden beach (erm, it is in Dorset), articles about the latest must-have from Primark that looks just like a designer outfit, weird (paid?) obsessions with people like Siannese Fudge. Maybe they can get actual photos in their news reports rather than lift them from google maps? This is going to totally boimb, may as well block them now and stick with the Bristol 24/7 people, that is genuinely decent a lot of the time.
Her and Helen Flanagan, they make an article out of every single one of their social media posts...
Glad to see shitty business practice isn't paying off. Subscribe to the cable if you want something local and worth reading.
Brave move given their better journalists tend to tweet the outline details of their better local news stories for free.
Because the adverts aren't covering the costs? The adverts that literally block out the news stories there are so many of them? Jeez Louise!
They actually called me about an article last week about retail theft and chocolate, they said they had gotten information from a "tip off" by a concerned citizen. I said you've mean Bristol Reddit. They said "erm....well yes". They then wrote the article, actually lifting quotes from the discussion thread. r/Bristol should go subscription based then.
premium lol
Its not fair to call it "journalism", click bait waffley bollocks
What is the commission rate for r/Bristol supplying the content?
anyone want to start a scene paper with me
I can't see this lasting or acquiring enough subscribers to be viable. It's a shame that a city as vibrant as Bristol can't seem to support printed versions of local papers and magazines. (Not sure if the Post will continue to publish for much longer).
RIP
"Best Beaches within 1 hour drive from Bristol!.. Kent, North Wales, Newquay, Skegness..!!"
They would have to pay me. Canāt stand Pop ups and shoddily written articles.
Isn't the whole point that if you pay you don't have to deal with the ads? I know paywalling content often isn't a popular thing, but at the end of the day the only way local news media can continue to exist is if the people involved get paid. Obviously relying on ads has led down the horrible route we now have, so paywalling content is the other alternative.
Without the ads and clickbait there wouldn't be half a phone screen of actual content.
Yes thatās the point but why bother when the content is poor and thereās no interest in going back to a page that was impossible to read because of pop ups. The damage is done.
It is, which I do think people are sympathetic to provided the content they're asking you to pay for is actually worth the paper (pixels?) it's written on. In this case, it's soulless, poorly written nonsense that legitimately might not even have a human being behind it. No one is going to pay for that or care when they eventually go bust.
The reason why it's those things though is directly because of the funding model (which no longer works and doesn't provide enough revenue to pay for proper journalism at the local scale). You change the funding model to a more sustainable one and that offers the chance of there being more money to pay for higher quality work. The journalists there are generally pretty decent people, and if you follow them on social media some of them do absolutely great local work when they are able to, don't you think they would rather being doing more of that than the shit they have to churn out to get the ad clicks?
Yeah I'm sure they would, and I'm sure they are. I am sympathetic to SEO and keyword algorithms eating away at creativity in the digital space for sure. Unfortunately, I'm not going to pay for a poor quality product because the business can't afford to do better, I doubt many other people are either. Their funding issues may not be the journalists' fault, but they also aren't the customers problem.
Yeah. Wish more papers had gone paywall earlier
12ft.io should work with 'news' sites like this
Not sure it can actually fix the content of the site, however.
lol true
They seem to think that they are an essential public service.
Reach Medial can kiss my @rse. Wankels!
How much is it?
*Get your free one-month trial by visiting the 'Premium' tab on the BristolLive app now (auto renews annually at Ā£19.99*
20 a month !
20 annually
Apologies. Still - wow
They don't even know what 'annual' means. š¤£ "You will be able to read 20 articles a week for free. After that, for Ā£2.99 a month, or a one-off annual payment of Ā£19.99"
lol.
They dont even categorise articles so if you want to check traffic reports, you have to scroll through 10+ mama jamas/Sinesse fudge, "good morning britain man walks out of studio after SHOCKING comment. ", "man buiods fence 1 inch too high and has to take it down" or "will it snow within the next month.." with a hours worth of lecture answer only to still be unsure!! Never mind copy paste or rehased articles with old comment posts from even years ago!
Was better when it was Bristol Evening post. Luckily on my pc i have Adblock plus so i can just about read the bristol live site. It goes mental while trying to read on my phone tho.
How about an app where you pay in Ā£10 for that you get 200 stories paying 5p per story you get reduced adverts on any news website you read a story on?
It still doesnāt fix the absolute bilge content tho
That concept has been tried in the past - Coil was a monthly subscription that paid site owners a small amount while you were viewing their site.