Hopes this succeeds...my impression of the news business is that journalists have vastly underestimated the importance of delivery system. Newspapers had success in the pre-Internet days, not just because of good journalism, but of good delivery systems. There's a reason why afternoon newspapers died as television became popular (back in 1948, there were 1,453 afternoon papers versus 328 newspapers: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/02/rip-pm-newspapers.html)...it's not that people are just attracted to stellar journalism, but the newspaper is expected to provide a useful, reliable service (such as classifieds). Too many journalists thought that people paid to subscribe because they, deep inside, cared about the First Amendment and freedom of the press. Yes, some subscribers do. I pay for the New York Times and the New Yorker because I want to support them, but there's not enough people like me around.

And truth be told, the New Yorker's digital service is a pain in the ass. For awhile, their user-management system was horrible (find your print magazine, enter your name in exactly as it appears on the label) and the web-viewer is trash, and to read it on iPad meant downloading hundreds of megabytes per issue. I only use the digital service because it comes free with the print subscription and would never subscribe to digital alone. Reducing friction has been a huge factor to online subscription services in general and the news industry has been far behind on it...hopefully the Netherlands project makes up for that.

But even with a good subscription service, I wonder if it's too little too late? People are now way in the habit of not paying for news. And unlike Netflix movies or Spotify tracks, the average person doesn't get addicted to morning news clips. Reading news is more work than pleasure, and that's always why newspapers, back in the old days, were very careful about how they did comics, sports, and other non-news sections.