Accurate, current information on topics that are relevant to the continued health and progress of society is presumably of great value to those members of socie

Accurate, current information on topics that are relevant to the continued health and progress of society is presumably of great value to those members of society - which is to say, people would pay for that. If that information costs $1,000 to gather and publish, and 1,500 people are willing to pay a dollar to read it (or rather, 100,000 people will pay $0.25 to read it and a collection of other stories like it), then you're in business! Unfortunately, it's proven to be a hard problem to look at your $500 profit and refuse an additional $500 profit to run a scummy ad next to the valued story. Ethics and long-term-value decisions are just not easy to optimize for - and I don't think the government is very good at that either; they just optimize for the next election instead of profits, which doesn't seem any better.