“If you do something that’s really awesome for the users, that’s usually something that’s not good for the publishers,” said Instapaper creator Marco Arment. “There’s always going to be pressure, from the user base and from competitors, to evade more ads.”
via niemanlab.org
In this great piece by Lois Beckett at niemanlab.org, there's an honest appraisal of the digital news model challenges. Developers are building platforms for users/readers, and publishers are doing all they can to preserve the economics for advertisers.
If the piece makes any point clear, it's that collaboration between developers and publishers is what will find the future business model for news. And some responsible developers, such as Marco Arment of Instapaper, are doing just that.
