Reinvention takes money.

A bunch of investors went on a buying spree of traditional news outlets about 25-30 years ago, hoping to make good money off of them. They also offered free access to the news online at the time.

Well, people stopped buying newspapers and fewer and fewer people watch the local news, so there was no money making happening.

They're still expecting to make the cash off the original investment. There will be no reinventing, civic consequences be damned.

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asdff 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I know there are 4th estate implications, but there's probably an argument made that news media should be a municipal endeavor supported through taxation. Yes there is public corruption all the time but usually it isn't a grand conspiracy sort of corruption, but on an isolated individual level, frequently exposed by staff themselves. In LA these days, the city controller is actually one of the best muckrakers right now. He is a sort of accountant/data scientist who doesn't care if the data he presents is embarrassing for the city leadership.

	▲	lenerdenator 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately, if it's a municipal endeavor, you will have coloring of the coverage. I don't trust the current political establishment in the US to not turn newsrooms into pure propaganda machines if public funding is requested. Besides, I don't know if there is much of a point. The current President, at the very least, bungled the release of millions of documents related to his former personal friend who was under investigation/indictment for sex trafficking. The public, for better or worse, just doesn't seem to want to make that a sticking point. If that's not a sticking point, what the hell is? What could a newsroom possibly dig up that could motivate people? And yes, I realize I am being very, very charitable to reducing Trump's possible exposure on Epstein to "bungled the document release", but I think you could at the very least get everyone to agree on that. There was a law passed by Congress, his administration didn't follow it as it had to. Cut and dry.