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Journalism costs money and I am willing to, and do pay for it. Ivestigative journalism costs even more. Yet it is critical for the existence of a democracy. "F

Journalism costs money and I am willing to, and do pay for it. Ivestigative journalism costs even more. Yet it is critical for the existence of a democracy. "First, if you want reliable information – pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product. Suppose a shady billionaire offered you the following deal: ‘I will pay you $30 a month, and in exchange, you will allow me to brainwash you for an hour every day, installing in your mind whichever political and commercial biases I want.’ Would you take the deal? Few sane people would. So the shady billionaire offers a slightly different deal: ‘You will allow me to brainwash you for one hour every day, and in exchange, I will not charge you anything for this service.’ Now the deal suddenly sounds tempting to hundreds of millions of people. Don’t follow their example." 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari In my opinion, the business press WSJ, and Finacial Times (both expensive) are among the best places for news. Both try hard to be accurate. A lot of rich people read them and make decisions because of information. If it is not accurate that is a real problem. (I am here excluding the editorial pages of the WSJ which exists on an entirely different planet). It also has the added benefit for me of much less nonsense. Sports, celebrity gossip, and all the fluff that takes up way to much space in many news publications.

konschubert 7y ago
Is it possible that he’s talking about scientific journals? That’s how I understood it.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  I thought he was talking about the people posting on Medium
- leereeves 7y ago
  There's absolutely no reason to pay for scientific journals. None of the money paid for journals supports research, it all goes to the publishers, who do not share with the scientists.
  - kiliantics 7y ago
    Yes, in fact, it is usually the case that scientists must also pay in order to be published in them
seem_2211 7y ago
The FT is exceptional in terms of its quality, especially when compared to CNN/ MSNBC/ Fox and even compared to a lot of the NYTs reporting which seems to be entirely focused on politics. If you aren't paying for information either in terms of money, or inaccessibility (as in, there might not be a paywall, but you need to know where to look), it's probably not worth consuming.
itronitron 7y ago
Maybe journalism can take an open-source approach where the 1% that finds it cost-effective for their business (decision-making in the case you mention) pays for its sustained development and makes it available for free to the 99%.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Open source is the absolute worst business model you could've suggested. Any business that benefits from journalism would keep it as secret as possible so only they can reap the rewards.
  - prepend 7y ago
    I don’t think business model is the right term. But open source consistently produces excellent software. I think better than any commercial software. I don’t think the solution is all software being open, but if by business model we mean a way to consistently produce good stuff then it would be a great option for news. I think the ultimate solution is to figure out a model for news that doesn’t rely on echo chamber subscriptions, privacy eating ads, or govt sponsored bias. It’s a tough nut to crack, but I think an OSS-like volunteer with reputation model is the most likely. I’m way more likely to donate to a Linux Foundation/FSF/Apache Foundation style org that figures out how to get good truth and relevancy than NYT.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      You're right that open source in itself is not a business model, but as a community it tends to have a similar set of ways of monetising. But I disagree OSS produces better quality than commercial, because the two don't always equate. What you're likely referring to as high quality (Firefox, Android, Chromium, Linux, Gnome, etc..) all have massive commercial backing. They are commercial products without a doubt. There's a ton of stuff that isn't commercial software like GCC or GNU tools but these aren't necessarily high quality unless you're capable of using them. That is, OSS is good quality for those who are likely developers or otherwise technically inclined. If we take it back to the context of open publishing models, we have to make sure we can build a business model that works for everyone, and not a subset niche of readers. I really don't believe there's a solution. As much as it pains me to say, I think diversity of revenue sources across the industry make for the best option - being ads, subscriptions and government entities all in the same market, which is basically what we have now. Much of the minute details of the status quo need to change, but I believe this is it for traditional* news publishing. *I think independent influencers and creators who are funded directly by fans are likely the biggest shake up, but that's still just a subscription and at much smaller scale.
username90 7y ago
The best way to get people to pay you is to preach to your choir, not to say important things. So the deal is more like "Will you pay me $30 a month to let me feed you information that will entrench your current worldview?". This results in articles like "This is the beginning of the end for Trump" being written every month throughout his entire presidency and there is still no end in sight before the election.
joecot 7y ago
I absolutely agree with that sentiment. And if that only affected individuals, I would agree and accept that point. The problem is that it affects the entire society. If a society needs to get information to form an opinion on something (say, breaking US Politics), and goes to Liberal or Centrist publications (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal), the articles are behind a paywall. If they go check a Right publication (Fox News, Infowars), it's free and readily available. When one of our biggest issues is a lack of public knowledge, it's counterproductive to make that knowledge inaccessible, when the misinformation is not.
kamyarg 7y ago
IMHO no newspaper is independent. Each has an owner that most of the times has a political agenda they try to push. So the best strategy is to read most prominent ones from different countries and create your own conclusion. But if I had to trust one, I guess it would be a The Guardian or DW(Deutsche Welle). DW is particularly interesting as every household in Germany has to pay a radio free(~17 Euros per month) that also in part supports DW(Along with their documentary series which as far as I can see don't hesitate to criticise the government or BND(secret service)). It is not a tax and as a result the German Government would have a hard time pushing its agenda to it.
- PossiblyKyle 7y ago
  Hi, made an account for this reply. I have no idea about DW but I would strongly advise you to take The Guardian with a grain of salt. I’m a (non-US) veteran and from my own personal experience (and personal biases, mind you), The Guardian is way off about its reporting. Will often (as most media) present a certain bias that just makes it impossible for me to trust them on any other subject I’m not involved in. In British journalism, BBC is better imo. However, a bias still exists. NYT’s investigative journalism is also not bad. Addressing the Guardian, I’d say their biggest issue is failing to address previous events that led to the current action. A (fake) example would be: Taliban deployed IEDs outside of a school zone, US retaliated and killed four combatants and two civilians in a drone strike. The Guardian’s headline would be: “US drone strike kills six, two of which civilian”. Is it wrong? No. Is it provoking? Yes, at least in my eyes. The rest of the article would probably discuss the US drone program or the specific event, rather than the chain of events as a whole. The IED incident might not be reported at all prior to the strike. Both the headline and the article itself have a disastrous impact on public opinion.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Actually, Deutsche Welle is the only German public broadcaster that is not funded by the radio fee since it's our international broadcaster. It's just illegal for the government to tell it what to broadcast.
  - kamyarg 7y ago
notacoward 7y ago
How are poor people supposed to get good news? Or are they not supposed to participate in that democracy?
- msbarnett 7y ago
  In the era before the internet, they had these printed things called “newspapers”, for which you had to pay money to read, and yet people of all classes of society read them, and got good (indeed, significantly higher quality) news than we get today, and participated in democracy. So there’s some evidence that “having to pay for news” hardly makes news the domain of the elite few.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    > they had these printed things called “newspapers” ..which were heavily subsidized, if not outright paid for, by ads.
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      And? Newspapers still cost actual money, running $30+ a month at the newsstand. Paywalled newssites are routinely criticized for charging a fraction of that, and somehow there’s still handwringing that they’re suddenly “depriving the poor of news”
      - notacoward 7y ago
        ...and therefore, subscriptions do not replace ads. "Ads are evil, buy subscriptions" is the sentiment I was responding to, but it has a subtext that exclusion is OK. It's not OK when you're talking about it as an essential pillar of democracy. The entire voting populace needs access to that information. Ads can give them that, patronage can give them that, government support can give them that, subscriptions can't.
        msbarnett 7y ago
deogeo 7y ago
Paying helps, but is no guarantee that you're not the product.
- rdtwo 7y ago
  I don’t think anyone can actually afford journalism that’s of decent quality now that classified died and most of print ads. The end result you have to rely on the free stuff where the quality is highly variable.
- Viliam1234 7y ago
  Having people pay for your news is even better for advertisers, because it shows them how much the readers care about what you write.
tylerl 7y ago
I have a response to this comment which represents the result of 16 months of dedicated research, and will have a positive effect on both the discussion and also the industry as a whole, provided my content gets the attention that it deserves. It'll cost you $15 to read it though. Research like this is expensive, and since you're the party who will benefit, you have a duty to pay me. If you refuse to pay me to read what I have to say, it means you hate the truth.
- nabergh 7y ago
  I doubt it. Why would I believe you?
- prepend 7y ago
  This is the problem with news and I don’t know the solution. It’s hard to trust a company that is spending lots of effort explaining how valuable and worthwhile they are. Many of these arguments boils down to “pay me or lose me.” While it’s true that good journalism costs money that doesn’t mean we should pay for mediocre and bad journalism. And it’s pretty hard for me to tell good from bad. This reminds me of site that when you fire visit them put up a window that asks you to subscribe. I don’t know if I want to subscribe so how would I be able to choose. But if a site relies on people subscribing without good judgment then that’s probably a sign that they don’t have a good feedback loop for value. Even the nytimes asks me to subscribe just to read for free. I’m not willing to do that to read the infrequent article from them and they are one of the world’s best. I used to subscribe but it was a chore to read regularly because of all the fluff. Unless there is a micropayment tip jar, I’ll continue to read only the journalism that is able to survive from non-targeted ads. Which, I think, works out ok for me as I don’t regret very frequently choosing the “lose me” option.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    > Unless there is a micropayment tip jar Blendle [1] tried this model. It did not work for them. They're now using an all you can eat model. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
- 7y ago
JJMcJ 7y ago
Regarding WSJ, Noam Chomsky at one time at least read it, he said he did because their subscribers were people who actually demanded accurate news.
Viliam1234 7y ago
The shady billionaire can continue brainwashing you even after you paid $30 a month, right? In my opinion, the main difference between the bad journalism that used to exist before, and the utterly horrible journalism that exists now, is that previously people treated the newspaper as a whole, and now they share articles on social networks separately. Why does it make a difference? Because when you have a package of 20 articles, and you understand that 3 of them are complete bullshit (because they are about a topic you know something about), you become less likely to trust the remaining 17 articles even if you see nothing wrong about them (because they are about topics you know little about). When a bad article can ruin your impression of the entire newspaper, the newspaper has an incentive to avoid at least the most obvious nonsense. The same mechanism mostly doesn't work online. People share one article at a time. You won't share it if you understand that it is nonsense. But the fact that some other article on the same online newspaper is obvious nonsense won't stop you from sharing this specific article. On paper, those articles are part of the same thing; online, each of them lives a separate life. (Actually, an online company such as Gawker can split their content among multiple websites, to further avoid bad impression from one article hurting the remaining ones.) Perhaps paying for online newspapers could return this perception of a newspaper as a package. (Assuming there would be no deals like "pay $100 a month, and get access to these five newspapers".) Maybe.
kiliantics 7y ago
My preferred source of news is one that is created voluntarily or through the support of (mostly grassroots) donors. It will usually be ideological in some way but of course every news source is inherently biased and, this way, at least you are removing a certain strong source of bias, especially if the outlet is non-profit. So, while I still have to take everything with a grain of salt, if I read stuff from say Democracy Now or The Intercept (or ideally much smaller outlets with direct connections to the news at hand), I can feel more confident that I am not being intentionally manipulated for ulterior purposes. The fact that such outlets are often directly challenging the narrative being presented by more mainstream media and other power/profit-driven institutions is a testament to this. And since they offer their news mostly free of charge, relying on donations at the cost of potential earnings, they demonstrate a greater commitment to values of transparency over brainwashing (hopefully). Of course, this category includes the likes of unhinged conspiracy theorists such as say Alex Jones. So one should still do some due diligence of fact-checking wherever possible to ensure they are presenting a narrative consistent with reality.

konschubert 7y ago

Is it possible that he’s talking about scientific journals? That’s how I understood it.

ElFitz 7y ago
I thought he was talking about the people posting on Medium
leereeves 7y ago
There's absolutely no reason to pay for scientific journals. None of the money paid for journals supports research, it all goes to the publishers, who do not share with the scientists.
- kiliantics 7y ago
  Yes, in fact, it is usually the case that scientists must also pay in order to be published in them

seem_2211 7y ago

The FT is exceptional in terms of its quality, especially when compared to CNN/ MSNBC/ Fox and even compared to a lot of the NYTs reporting which seems to be entirely focused on politics. If you aren't paying for information either in terms of money, or inaccessibility (as in, there might not be a paywall, but you need to know where to look), it's probably not worth consuming.

itronitron 7y ago

Maybe journalism can take an open-source approach where the 1% that finds it cost-effective for their business (decision-making in the case you mention) pays for its sustained development and makes it available for free to the 99%.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Open source is the absolute worst business model you could've suggested. Any business that benefits from journalism would keep it as secret as possible so only they can reap the rewards.
- prepend 7y ago
  I don’t think business model is the right term. But open source consistently produces excellent software. I think better than any commercial software. I don’t think the solution is all software being open, but if by business model we mean a way to consistently produce good stuff then it would be a great option for news. I think the ultimate solution is to figure out a model for news that doesn’t rely on echo chamber subscriptions, privacy eating ads, or govt sponsored bias. It’s a tough nut to crack, but I think an OSS-like volunteer with reputation model is the most likely. I’m way more likely to donate to a Linux Foundation/FSF/Apache Foundation style org that figures out how to get good truth and relevancy than NYT.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    You're right that open source in itself is not a business model, but as a community it tends to have a similar set of ways of monetising. But I disagree OSS produces better quality than commercial, because the two don't always equate. What you're likely referring to as high quality (Firefox, Android, Chromium, Linux, Gnome, etc..) all have massive commercial backing. They are commercial products without a doubt. There's a ton of stuff that isn't commercial software like GCC or GNU tools but these aren't necessarily high quality unless you're capable of using them. That is, OSS is good quality for those who are likely developers or otherwise technically inclined. If we take it back to the context of open publishing models, we have to make sure we can build a business model that works for everyone, and not a subset niche of readers. I really don't believe there's a solution. As much as it pains me to say, I think diversity of revenue sources across the industry make for the best option - being ads, subscriptions and government entities all in the same market, which is basically what we have now. Much of the minute details of the status quo need to change, but I believe this is it for traditional* news publishing. *I think independent influencers and creators who are funded directly by fans are likely the biggest shake up, but that's still just a subscription and at much smaller scale.

username90 7y ago

The best way to get people to pay you is to preach to your choir, not to say important things. So the deal is more like "Will you pay me $30 a month to let me feed you information that will entrench your current worldview?". This results in articles like "This is the beginning of the end for Trump" being written every month throughout his entire presidency and there is still no end in sight before the election.

joecot 7y ago

I absolutely agree with that sentiment. And if that only affected individuals, I would agree and accept that point. The problem is that it affects the entire society. If a society needs to get information to form an opinion on something (say, breaking US Politics), and goes to Liberal or Centrist publications (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal), the articles are behind a paywall. If they go check a Right publication (Fox News, Infowars), it's free and readily available. When one of our biggest issues is a lack of public knowledge, it's counterproductive to make that knowledge inaccessible, when the misinformation is not.

kamyarg 7y ago

IMHO no newspaper is independent. Each has an owner that most of the times has a political agenda they try to push. So the best strategy is to read most prominent ones from different countries and create your own conclusion. But if I had to trust one, I guess it would be a The Guardian or DW(Deutsche Welle). DW is particularly interesting as every household in Germany has to pay a radio free(~17 Euros per month) that also in part supports DW(Along with their documentary series which as far as I can see don't hesitate to criticise the government or BND(secret service)). It is not a tax and as a result the German Government would have a hard time pushing its agenda to it.

PossiblyKyle 7y ago
Hi, made an account for this reply. I have no idea about DW but I would strongly advise you to take The Guardian with a grain of salt. I’m a (non-US) veteran and from my own personal experience (and personal biases, mind you), The Guardian is way off about its reporting. Will often (as most media) present a certain bias that just makes it impossible for me to trust them on any other subject I’m not involved in. In British journalism, BBC is better imo. However, a bias still exists. NYT’s investigative journalism is also not bad. Addressing the Guardian, I’d say their biggest issue is failing to address previous events that led to the current action. A (fake) example would be: Taliban deployed IEDs outside of a school zone, US retaliated and killed four combatants and two civilians in a drone strike. The Guardian’s headline would be: “US drone strike kills six, two of which civilian”. Is it wrong? No. Is it provoking? Yes, at least in my eyes. The rest of the article would probably discuss the US drone program or the specific event, rather than the chain of events as a whole. The IED incident might not be reported at all prior to the strike. Both the headline and the article itself have a disastrous impact on public opinion.
anoncake 7y ago
Actually, Deutsche Welle is the only German public broadcaster that is not funded by the radio fee since it's our international broadcaster. It's just illegal for the government to tell it what to broadcast.
- kamyarg 7y ago

notacoward 7y ago

How are poor people supposed to get good news? Or are they not supposed to participate in that democracy?

msbarnett 7y ago
In the era before the internet, they had these printed things called “newspapers”, for which you had to pay money to read, and yet people of all classes of society read them, and got good (indeed, significantly higher quality) news than we get today, and participated in democracy. So there’s some evidence that “having to pay for news” hardly makes news the domain of the elite few.
- notacoward 7y ago
  > they had these printed things called “newspapers” ..which were heavily subsidized, if not outright paid for, by ads.
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    And? Newspapers still cost actual money, running $30+ a month at the newsstand. Paywalled newssites are routinely criticized for charging a fraction of that, and somehow there’s still handwringing that they’re suddenly “depriving the poor of news”
    - notacoward 7y ago
      ...and therefore, subscriptions do not replace ads. "Ads are evil, buy subscriptions" is the sentiment I was responding to, but it has a subtext that exclusion is OK. It's not OK when you're talking about it as an essential pillar of democracy. The entire voting populace needs access to that information. Ads can give them that, patronage can give them that, government support can give them that, subscriptions can't.
      - msbarnett 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago

Paying helps, but is no guarantee that you're not the product.

rdtwo 7y ago
I don’t think anyone can actually afford journalism that’s of decent quality now that classified died and most of print ads. The end result you have to rely on the free stuff where the quality is highly variable.
Viliam1234 7y ago
Having people pay for your news is even better for advertisers, because it shows them how much the readers care about what you write.

tylerl 7y ago

I have a response to this comment which represents the result of 16 months of dedicated research, and will have a positive effect on both the discussion and also the industry as a whole, provided my content gets the attention that it deserves. It'll cost you $15 to read it though. Research like this is expensive, and since you're the party who will benefit, you have a duty to pay me. If you refuse to pay me to read what I have to say, it means you hate the truth.

nabergh 7y ago
I doubt it. Why would I believe you?
prepend 7y ago
This is the problem with news and I don’t know the solution. It’s hard to trust a company that is spending lots of effort explaining how valuable and worthwhile they are. Many of these arguments boils down to “pay me or lose me.” While it’s true that good journalism costs money that doesn’t mean we should pay for mediocre and bad journalism. And it’s pretty hard for me to tell good from bad. This reminds me of site that when you fire visit them put up a window that asks you to subscribe. I don’t know if I want to subscribe so how would I be able to choose. But if a site relies on people subscribing without good judgment then that’s probably a sign that they don’t have a good feedback loop for value. Even the nytimes asks me to subscribe just to read for free. I’m not willing to do that to read the infrequent article from them and they are one of the world’s best. I used to subscribe but it was a chore to read regularly because of all the fluff. Unless there is a micropayment tip jar, I’ll continue to read only the journalism that is able to survive from non-targeted ads. Which, I think, works out ok for me as I don’t regret very frequently choosing the “lose me” option.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > Unless there is a micropayment tip jar Blendle [1] tried this model. It did not work for them. They're now using an all you can eat model. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
7y ago

JJMcJ 7y ago

Regarding WSJ, Noam Chomsky at one time at least read it, he said he did because their subscribers were people who actually demanded accurate news.

Viliam1234 7y ago

The shady billionaire can continue brainwashing you even after you paid $30 a month, right? In my opinion, the main difference between the bad journalism that used to exist before, and the utterly horrible journalism that exists now, is that previously people treated the newspaper as a whole, and now they share articles on social networks separately. Why does it make a difference? Because when you have a package of 20 articles, and you understand that 3 of them are complete bullshit (because they are about a topic you know something about), you become less likely to trust the remaining 17 articles even if you see nothing wrong about them (because they are about topics you know little about). When a bad article can ruin your impression of the entire newspaper, the newspaper has an incentive to avoid at least the most obvious nonsense. The same mechanism mostly doesn't work online. People share one article at a time. You won't share it if you understand that it is nonsense. But the fact that some other article on the same online newspaper is obvious nonsense won't stop you from sharing this specific article. On paper, those articles are part of the same thing; online, each of them lives a separate life. (Actually, an online company such as Gawker can split their content among multiple websites, to further avoid bad impression from one article hurting the remaining ones.) Perhaps paying for online newspapers could return this perception of a newspaper as a package. (Assuming there would be no deals like "pay $100 a month, and get access to these five newspapers".) Maybe.

kiliantics 7y ago

My preferred source of news is one that is created voluntarily or through the support of (mostly grassroots) donors. It will usually be ideological in some way but of course every news source is inherently biased and, this way, at least you are removing a certain strong source of bias, especially if the outlet is non-profit. So, while I still have to take everything with a grain of salt, if I read stuff from say Democracy Now or The Intercept (or ideally much smaller outlets with direct connections to the news at hand), I can feel more confident that I am not being intentionally manipulated for ulterior purposes. The fact that such outlets are often directly challenging the narrative being presented by more mainstream media and other power/profit-driven institutions is a testament to this. And since they offer their news mostly free of charge, relying on donations at the cost of potential earnings, they demonstrate a greater commitment to values of transparency over brainwashing (hopefully). Of course, this category includes the likes of unhinged conspiracy theorists such as say Alex Jones. So one should still do some due diligence of fact-checking wherever possible to ensure they are presenting a narrative consistent with reality.