The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries?

If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests?

Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts:

Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in.

Maybe a liberal, democratic state could successfully build something similar for news organizations: all citizens have to pay a "journalism tax", which they then channel to a subscription for a vehicle they trust.

Yes, a million ways this can be abused, the government may censor opposition, etc. I know, I said the idea wasn't great. But worth pondering. Also, this is based on a very stylized understanding of how said German tax works (I'm not German and never looked at it that deeply)

btw I understand this is the opposite of "free", but more about journalism financing in general.

The problem has been differing narratives from different sources with different biases, motives, and objectives. The solution is a thorough interrogation of different sources, cross-checking and validating novel claims, using a Bayesian approach to maintaining a model of the world. Not rigid, but roughly scientific.

Most people can't afford to do that, so they pick a proxy from among the many individuals that do the work of sorting and filtering and comparing and validating news from a wide spectrum.

Some proxies are decent, some are not, and come with their own biases and skew.

The solution is high intelligence local AI that maintains a world model for you, providing you with updates based on your interests and cross-validated world events, with a rigorous record of sources and reliability. Anything short of that is just repackaged proxy games.

On the plus side, Asmongold or Hasan Piker are the low bar to beat. Haha. People are so well informed and educated now that they have access to the interwebs.

It’s unfortunate we haven’t solved the micro-payment problem. Crypto was an obvious solution but anything would require a hefty network effect. But imagine like a starbucks card or whatever you have your micropayment card, and it auto reloads when it hits zero with 20 bucks or whatever. When you visit the times, a modal pops up, “This article costs $0.02. Read it? y/n or $1 for a day pass”. Sure pirates will get around it but they already do. Just make it grandma easy and you’re done. It’s just the money probably isn’t good enough for VC dollars to roll something out with enough big players to jump in.

Easy. One of the primary reason that I don't subscribe to any kind of news anymore is exactly because of all the advertising and the being owned by giant money and power concerns.

I would happily subscribe at a quite a bit higher rate for news orgs that go non-profit/co-op and nuke the ads, and I don't think I'm in the minority here.

Keep trying to do the same thing expecting a different outcome, and you know the rest of the story. I applaud this step and hope they push their differentiation as a people-aligned source of Utah news even further.

With how connected we are these days, what I'd really like to see is for them to make crowd-sourcing and discussion a systemic part of their processes and site/app. They can't be everywhere where news that's important to some is happening, but all of us together can.

Isn't it equally important to ask the question:how exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you can afford the salaries?

> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries?

you provide free service, build brand and ecosystem, and charge for extra services, e.g. automatic-monitoring specific news topic, analytics, faster delivery on scale, etc. and even ads/ads free accounts

NPR/public radio has been doing a decent job without much obtrusive third-party advertising.

Maybe that is part of the plan, eliminate truth so that everyone just gives up.

Perhaps crowd sourced facts/news with legit upvoting, weighted upvoting based on historic 'credibility'. Top contributions get a share of add revenue.

Political parties and foreign actors, eventually. Propaganda pieces are usually free to access.

Don't try to be "objective" or "impartial." That's an impossible task, and anyone claiming to do so is being dishonest.

Instead, own your biases. Make them explicit and public. That way people can understand were you're coming from, and take that into account.

There will always be bias in any reporting. It's better to make it visible than to pretend it doesn't exist.

This means having a clear perspective and "owning" that perspective, instead of shying away from it.

Coincidentally, this type of thinking can dramatically increase brand loyalty and trust.

There's an obvious answer: a good public news service.

I know, I know, that one is problematic too. Some countries have pulled it off relatively successfully, but it's never perfect.

The thing is, this is exactly what the government is for: services that individuals don't want to pay for, but are important to have as a society.

This is possible if there's a real division of powers in the government. Yes, that sounds increasingly unlikely now, but it's no fantasy, it has been achieved in many different places and moments in history, to a reasonable degree.

I mean, there's a reason why journalism is called "the fourth estate", maybe it should literally be the fourth independent government branch alongside the executive, legislative and judicial. We are in the "information age" after all. Or at least a relatively independent and technocratic government agency with decent funding.

And don't tell me that "we have it but nobody watches it", then it's just not properly funded or supported. The BBC is extremely competitive alongside commercial news media, both in the UK and internationally. Many countries have similarly strong public media even if it is not internationally as well known, because of the language barrier.

If people don’t want to pay, then they don’t actually value the news. I pay for publications that I trust and want to continue reading.

The key is finding a niche where the news organization can produce quality reporting that people actually value. “Free News” is just another ad business.

Mass syndication has worked splendidly for all other media. But textual media publishers still refuse.

They have to learn from Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, and such and start offering bulk subscriptions for a fair price. It's better for the individual news providers to earn 10 cents each from 10 million subscribers, than to earn 10 dollars each from 10 000 subscribers.

Wait, I never understood why we need "intrepid reporters" hired by a certain company to enter a war zone, for instance. Everyone has cameras now. They're ubiquitous.

What we really need is collaboration online to make sense of the footage being uploaded.

And the same for any kind of news. Why do we need the capitalist model again? Look at Wikipedia, Linux, open source software, and more.

Publicly funded, like the BBC "tax" in the UK which they used to have (not sure if they still do?)

Or PBS/NPR in the US, funded by taxpayers. Worked reasonably well, and fairly independently, for decades until Trump defunded it.

> If the people arent interested in paying

They are, according to the OP:

https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-payw...