I really wish there was a consortium that you could pay into for a number of investigative news publishers that will give you a non trivial amount of reads (15?) per month before asking for site specific funds.
Who of the publishers are actually investigating? I see a lot of articles “reporting” on some politician getting “slammed” because they are thirsty for clicks. I see plenty of op-eds posted with zero fact checking by the host. Why would I give these guys any money?
Who of the publishers are actually investigating? I see a lot of articles “reporting” on some politician getting “slammed” because they are thirsty for clicks. I see plenty of op-eds posted with zero fact checking by the host. Why would I give these guys any money?
It also leaves room for bad actors. If research takes more work and therefore more money to do, the chance it getting paywalled is very high. Compared to cheap populism and fake news that requires no work and is highly likely freely available and will be pushed on social media because of higher engagement metrics. Cocktail of doom.
credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it
Some exceptions may apply, such as for example the NYT (and other so-called credible outlets) being basically a mouthpiece for cops and the Israeli government in the vast majority of relevant articles.
I know of smaller media with far less resources and audience that somehow manage to be profitable without paywalls, so I’d find it hard to believe that the major sites paywalling their articles are doing it for anything other than the stubborness of shareholders, CEOs and executives thinking they can always milk the cow some more.
What sort of content are those smaller media publishing?
In theory the NYT is one of the last sites heavily finding investigative journalism and deeper reporting, not just repackaging stories mixed with a little local coverage.
I don’t really know how true that is, but there can be way different levels of journalism.
Mehdi Hasan recently got fired from MSNBC for questioning Zionist propaganda. He then created his own news network named Zeteo. Zeteo already has a massive amount of subs. Far bigger than expected.
There is a reason Zeteo got such a massive amount of subs recently. People are tired of paying money to receive israeli propaganda. For these “independent” news outlets which are all owned by like 3 conglomerates to feed us the same narratives.
All these garbage “independent journalism” sites have just been pushing Zionist propaganda for the last 6 months. NYT straight up hiring Zionist ex-IDF soldiers to manufacture consent for Genocide. These propaganda outlets should be defunded and dismantled instead of trying to steal more taxpayer dollars.
I think it’s an interesting tension between free content and paid content. People need money to pay rent and buy food. How should journalism be monetized in an ethical and sustainable way?
At this this point I would be happy to have quality journalists write well researched and sourced articles and release them on paper again, for me to buy.
I am so tired of the constant internet warfare for my attention span and clicks, SEO and blatant misinformation. Just give me relevant news I can trust for the most part, without the need to verify the authors didn’t just make shit up to push a narrative on me.
Social media is good to share the latest breaking news or consume things that aren’t news (like memes). But it has become a terrible place to acquire reliable information. Constant vigilance is required, which is a feature, but also mentally exhausting.
The same way paper journalism is: ads. But not animated, video, in your face ads. Static images are good enough for print, they should be good enough for online journalism as well.
You write “Israel probably should ease off a bit”, and suddenly Coca-Cola, Nike and Amazon stop advertising next to it because they don’t like all the drama of genocide.
We had the obvious example years ago where GameSpot reviewed Kane and Lynch 2 which was heavily advertised on their site, slated it, and then the review was edited, the score bumped and the reviewer was promptly fired and started his own site. I suspect this has been happening on a more subtle level in proper news for ages. Few are interested in truth. They want happy content eyeballs that return to look at more ads.
They even mention in the article, just above the cut, that they’re afraid this article will get paywalled lol
And below the cut, that they’re aware of the irony, but surely people who pay for journalism can see why journalism is important, which is like… good point, I guess. Sometimes the system sucks and we have to work with what we have.
The only model of journalism that works is public funded/donated.
We need something similar for print media, that isn’t just transcriptions of PBS/NPR segments.
A big issue here is that NPR/PBS sources a lot of their journalism from outlets such as Propublica or Bellingcat for national/international stories while relying on local affiliate stations to fill in the gap.
As local journalism dies, NPR and PBS have less places to source from. This is a big issue for democracy and something we need to solve.
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