Comment on So much for that dream.

• NENathaniel@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Well there are 3 alternatives.

  Ads, which everyone on here would endorse blocking, so that’s out.

  All journalism becomes volunteer work, which seems unlikely :D

  Or all journalism becomes publicly funded via-taxes. This is probably the optimal option but I think most people would agree that ALL journalism being government funded has a ton of risks.

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  • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If I have to pay for it:

    • it cannot be sensationalized. It cannot even veer mildly from the found facts.
    • it cannot be filled with agenda bias
    • it cannot hold any false, non peer reviewed information
    • they have to pay their sources. And They have to pay their sources well. Especially the ones who are expected to uphold to peer reviews (science journalists, I’m looking at you)

    If there is a free one with ads:

    • ads cannot fabricate their facts either.

    Wanna regulate? Well. Then. Let’s regulate.

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  • NathanielThomas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Journalism being private run has created the situation we’re in though.

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    • NENathaniel@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There are tons of countries that already have national and local publicly-funded news networks. Is your solution to move every currently private network to a public-funded model?

      Cause to me that sounds like it sounds very expensive, and more importantly, very dangerous to give governments such extreme levels of control over information.

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      • NathanielThomas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Again, private interests have the tendency to extreme levels of control over information.

        They do mega mergers so that three companies end up owning all the news. And can, therefore, control it.

        Famously, this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGIYU2Xznb4

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  • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can avoid the risk of tax-funded journalism by making it so that even though they’re government subsidized they’re still independent. There are multiple potential ways to evaluate which journalistic entities qualify for government funding, all with pros and cons, but it could work.

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  • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Here in Finland we have YLE, and it has news, movies/shows, documentaries, radio/podcasts etc. It is funded with tax money, and I consider the two biggest pros to be that news and more are easily accessible for free to anyone and that since YLE isn’t trying to profit from journalism, there are no clickbait headlines. Though, the worst flaw is that goverment-funded journalism is prone to propaganda, and once you control the media, you control the whole country, so people need to be very careful.

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    • NENathaniel@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yea that’s precisely it. Publicly-funded media definitely can be the best option, but there’s always risks it can fall into pure propaganda some day

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      • Trekman10@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You can always have it be publicly funded but managed by a non profit designated by the government, and make it organized in such a way that if a politician or government institution had a problem with some reporting, there’s nothing they can do.

        The same concerns about editorial independence and human fallacy apply in the private sector top. There has always been pressure between the editorial, marketing, and journalist parts of newspapers.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think you’re missing a potential 4th one, though I’m not 100% convinced as to its feasibility, but a Universal Basic Income and greater societal wealth redistribution raises the bottom so much that everyone can easily afford 30 news subscriptions.

    Though personally I think more arms length public funding is the better option since the incentives of capitalism often don’t align with the incentives of high quality journalism.

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  • dx1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    All journalism becomes volunteer work, running off of optional donations, which seems unlikely :D

    It’s not quite that simple with PBS or NPR, but that’s the basic idea. Open public funding with no political or corporate control sounds like the safest bet. It’s as viable as people deciding to support it.

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    • ricdeh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      In Germany, the independence of publicly funded media is guaranteed by the payment of a special fee that is collected independently of the normal taxes, and is distributed directly among the public media institutions. No parliament has to approve any funding, the only attack vector would be to change the legislation behind this financing but that would require a parliamentary majority and would therefore have to be the will of the people.

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      • dx1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s better than “all media is run by the Fuhrer” I suppose, but probably still preferable for people to have the choice of which to support.

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• BigNote@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is because the Internet killed journalism’s revenue model. In the past a big metro daily had three main revenue streams; subscriptions, newsstand sales and classifieds/advertising. Newsstand sales is the only leg that didn’t get gutted by the internet, so in order to keep it viable, they have to charge more than they used to, but even then, it’s just not really cost efficient and many major metro dailies no longer print a hard copy version.

  One problem with journalism is that since everyone consumes it in one way or another, everyone imagines that they have an informed opinion about it, but unless you went to j-school and/or have worked in the field, you probably don’t.

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  • demlet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I work for a plant that prints local papers. They are an invaluable source of local news, and you are correct, the internet is slowly killing them. It’s a real loss for civic engagement. People really need to pay attention to what’s happening locally. National stories are sexier, but we actually have much more control over what happens in our own neighborhoods and towns.

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    • ricdeh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      But what keeps a local newspaper from creating an online service over which the papers can be bought, maybe even for a lower price because manufacturing costs are no longer extant?

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      • demlet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        They are all trying. I’m honestly not sure yet whether it will work. I hope so.

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      • BigNote@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        In a word the answer is cost, or economic viability. Local papers can’t operate for free, even strictly online. It costs money to hire and maintain a functional staff of college-educated reporters and editors who are willing to live and work in small towns and rural communities.

        Without classified ads/advertising, a physical subscription base and real newsstand sales, where is the money supposed to come from?

        The answer is that it’s not there at all, and that’s why local news has basically died over the course of the last two decades.

        If you can think of a new workable revenue model for local news, by all means please do tell. The entire nation is screaming for a solution, though many of us may not know it.

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• Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Because classified ads used to pay for the paper.

  Heck, ‘The Advertiser’ used to be a popular name for newspapers.

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  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You would sometimes pick up a newspaper specifically for the ads. You might be looking for a job or a car and that was a good starting place.

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    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Back before VCRs were a thing, movies like ‘Deep Throat’ were only available in theaters. The local theaters ran ads for XXX movies on the same pages as the general stuff.

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• ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Newspapers used to be full of ads and were also subscription based. You could buy a one off from a paper for relatively cheap, but their primary income was ads and subscribers.

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• cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This seems like a common theme. There are just so many things to subscribe to: Netflix, Spotify, New York Times, Amazon, Audible, individual app store applications, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, NPR+, Disney+, etc. Just keeping track of it all is complicated. And all content producers want to maintain the subscription framework, too, passing the costs on to us. This is a little off topic, but it still bugs me that Netflix became a content producer. I think it would have been a cleaner/cheaper arrangement if they’d remained a subscription service only.

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