It costs money to pay journalists.

You get that money through advertising or subscription revenue.

Advertising revenue is gone because everyone has adblock. You couldn't adblock TV or a physical newspaper.

Subscription revenue is gone because newspapers don't monopolize their localities. Anyone that isn't the New York Times is struggling.

> It never occurred to me we’d get here.

My parents were journalists. The business model has been broken before I could read.

▲

nozzlegear 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Subscription revenue is gone because newspapers don't monopolize their localities.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean newspapers don't utilize their localities as much as they could, or that they're unable to create monopolies on local information nowadays?

Just genuinely curious, I have a brother in law who's the editor at his small town newspaper, so I'm tangentially interested in this kind of thing.

	▲	jjmarr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		A local newspaper traditionally paid wire services[1] like the Associated Press or Reuters for the majority of their articles. They would only assign journalists for important or local content. The daily newspaper was a news aggregation subscription service more than a news creation service. It was inherently geographical because they had to print the newspaper overnight and deliver it to you every morning. They would also select different articles depending on what might interest readers, e.g. an Iowa paper might syndicate an article on corn subsidies that a Floridian paper would ignore. Computers fixed both the distribution problem and the recommendation problem. The New York Times can distribute news nationwide instantly and simultaneously tailor my feed to my specific interests. They can do so better than local publications thanks to economies of scale. If you do have a subscription, it won't be to the Syracuse Herald-Journal but to the New York Times. [1] named after telegraphic wire, which is how old this business model is.

▲

goosejuice a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Advertising revenue is gone because everyone has adblock.

Not even remotely. Meta made $200 billion in ad revenue last year. NYT ad revenue increasing 25% yoy and they show ads to subscribers.

	▲	master-lincoln a day ago \| parent [-]
		Those poor souls who don't have an adblocker keep the wheel spinning. I imagine it to be terrible to see the internet like they do...

▲

TheDong 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not mentioned is taxes.

A free press is important to democracy, so the government should move some tax money to journalists, and then this link could instead be to a taxpayer funded site (like NPR) instead of to a for-profit ad-powered spam-site run by billionaires who pay journalists as little as possible while pocketing as much as they can.

Unfortunately, PBS and NPR are so severely under-funded that they need to run donation drives and can't do journalism of this level.

▲

jjmarr 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

We adopted this in Canada and Facebook/Instagram have banned news since 2023.

The idea is that social media companies offer summaries of news that replace reading the article for most people. Thanks to commenters bypassing paywalls they can get the full article too!

News companies cannot effectively negotiate with large social media companies for a slice of ad revenue due to discrepancies in size.

The government proposed a compulsory licensing scheme where websites with an "asymmetric bargaining position" (i.e Big Tech) that link to news must pay.

Google is paying $100 million,[1] Meta walked away from the negotiating table.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-bill-c18-on...

	▲	raw_anon_1111 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		And in Australia most of that money went to Murdoch controlled media.

▲

raw_anon_1111 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I can’t believe someone actually makes this suggestion after seeing what has happened in the last year. The Trump administration cut funding for PBS and NPR because he didn’t like what they were saying.

This isn’t new. The government has been trying to cut funding for PBS since the 60s.

Why would anyone want the government to fund the press? How would you actually expect it to cover government corruption?

▲

metabagel a day ago | parent [-]

Republicans have been trying to cut funding for PBS.

▲

raw_anon_1111 a day ago | parent [-]

What’s your point? A press funded by the government is not going to go out of its way to bite the hand that feeds it.

▲

microtonal a day ago | parent | next [-]

It functions fine in many countries though. E.g. a lot of European countries have public broadcasters paid by tax money and they sure do criticize and mock government.

Commercial broadcasters tend to lean towards entertainment (needs ad revenue), so news becomes entertainment too.

It works as long as the state and public believes in democracy, accountability, etc. It’s very vulnerable, but everything in democracy is. Democracy and free press can only work if the population also defends it, which is what is failing in the US. The majority of population does not want to defend democracy.

▲

master-lincoln a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Huh? You mentioned yourself that PBS and NPR did. So that proves your point invalid.

▲

raw_anon_1111 a day ago | parent [-]

So my point is invalid that you shouldn’t depend on government funding of media because if the government doesn’t like what you say they will remove funding when that’s exactly what they did?

But I think the hard on for PBS that conservatives have is that PBS admitted gay people exist.

Back in the 60s PBS was controversial partially because it showed black and white kids playing together on Sesane Street…

▲

master-lincoln a day ago | parent [-]

Well it worked for 80 years it seems and now that the USA does not have a democratically acting government anymore they want to get rid of the funding.

Press that does not need to be profitable is extremely valuable to a democracy as it can openly talk about any issues without a conflict of interest.

Good democracies have that funding and no meddling of politicians with the content enshrined in their constitution.

▲

raw_anon_1111 a day ago | parent [-]

So exactly when was the US a “good democracy”? 80 years ago segregation was still in the South based on a ruling by the Supreme Court “separate but equal”.

Even until the 80s it was legal to arrest a homosexual couple for having sex in their own home based on “sodomy” laws.

Today women are dying because doctors are afraid of performing medical necessary abortions to save their lives because they might go to jail

They have been trying to get rid of funding since at least 1969 when Mr. Rogers himself went before Congress to try to keep it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA

It amazes me that anyone who knows anything about this country actually wants to give it more control of the media or any increased power .

▲

metabagel a day ago | parent [-]

Let's be clear that Democrats support democracy and the democratic process. Republicans support oligarchy and a new gilded age of robber barons.

If government actually funded news in the public interest, it would mean that Democrats were in charge. Sure, Republicans could always cut funding or pressure publicly funded news if they returned to power. It would be our job to make sure that didn't happen. Publicly funded media can't work under corrupt Republican administration.

But, it's also true that commercial media is being bent under pressure from the Trump administration. Republicans will try to break anything which they perceive as limiting their power. Your narrow focus on publicly funded media seems to miss that big picture.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Democrats don’t support “wrong speak” any more than Republicans - it’s just a different type of wrong speak. I a socially liberal Black guy who supports almost every type of equal rights imaginable would immediately get cancelled and liberals would try to de platform me once I speak out against the one bridge too far for me - biological men in women’s sports or other women only competitions.