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> You don't need to be for-profit to be independent When I stated "private", I implicitly referred to for-profit and non-profit organizations a-like. I could

> You don't need to be for-profit to be independent When I stated "private", I implicitly referred to for-profit and non-profit organizations a-like. I could go on a tangent about the merits and differences between public and private legal entities, non-profit and profit based organizations. I could even dive into the rabbit hole of private organizations who receive grants from public endowments and such. It's an interesting discussion. But that would be splitting hairs. It should be clear that organizing any media outlet implies incurring costs and expenses, regardless. Those need to be covered somehow. And the strategic choices made in picking sources of revenue are going to affect independence in subtle and less subtle ways regardless. > and you don't need a paywall to get paid - see Guardian I didn't say news outlets "need" a paywall. I said that there is no such thing as a free lunch and someone always pays for putting the news out. The last paragraph in that op-ed explicitly states how necessary it is to pay for content: > In the last three years, more than one million people around the world have chosen to support The Guardian financially. Thank you to all of you who have supported us and we hope more of you will consider joining us on this mission — you can do this through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, or as part of our patrons programme. As we approach the Guardian’s 200th anniversary in 2021, your support will help ensure we can keep holding the powerful to account, with purpose, for many generations to come. I was also well aware of the choice made by the Guardian. I omitted the example because their choice entails taking a calculated but huge risk: politely asking their audience to pay for free content could have gone horribly wrong. The audience of the Guardian was willing to follow suit, but another audience might simply indulge in freeloading without limits.

tuukkah 7y ago
Thanks for elaborating! I think we mostly agree. Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I would say in general it's ok as long as your prices are reasonable and there is no surge pricing, but media outlets can have a conflict of interest between reliable reporting and attention-seeking. For WSJ, the middle ground might be to fund their pandemia coverage from their profits elsewhere, and to profit indirectly via new readership.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Exactly! News doesn't "happen", it is "made". Hence the phrase "that made the headlines!". Reporting is mirroring events as they happen, and in doing so creating a narrative that explains why things happen and how they unfold. This is where context matters and Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message" starts to make sense. > He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message > Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I think it's hard question to answer because you're implicitly asking "can we find a universal standard that provides a consistent answer in different contexts?" and the answer is "no" because ethical and moral standards are always based on a collective consensus emerging from the interplay between many individual, contradicting beliefs. This is why moral standards can also shift and change over time. It's worth observing that there will always be unscrupulous outlets ready to profit from a good crisis ("don't let a good crisis go to waste!"). This is where it's up to society to define their own moral standards and give individuals the leverage through education to critically assert the value of the news. Is this item truly informative or is it clear fearmongering and not worth the paper it was printed on? And how much do we value voicing our own dissent or disagreement with what was printed?

tuukkah 7y ago

Thanks for elaborating! I think we mostly agree. Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I would say in general it's ok as long as your prices are reasonable and there is no surge pricing, but media outlets can have a conflict of interest between reliable reporting and attention-seeking. For WSJ, the middle ground might be to fund their pandemia coverage from their profits elsewhere, and to profit indirectly via new readership.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
Exactly! News doesn't "happen", it is "made". Hence the phrase "that made the headlines!". Reporting is mirroring events as they happen, and in doing so creating a narrative that explains why things happen and how they unfold. This is where context matters and Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message" starts to make sense. > He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message > Perhaps the biggest question is whether it's ok to profit from the pandemia? I think it's hard question to answer because you're implicitly asking "can we find a universal standard that provides a consistent answer in different contexts?" and the answer is "no" because ethical and moral standards are always based on a collective consensus emerging from the interplay between many individual, contradicting beliefs. This is why moral standards can also shift and change over time. It's worth observing that there will always be unscrupulous outlets ready to profit from a good crisis ("don't let a good crisis go to waste!"). This is where it's up to society to define their own moral standards and give individuals the leverage through education to critically assert the value of the news. Is this item truly informative or is it clear fearmongering and not worth the paper it was printed on? And how much do we value voicing our own dissent or disagreement with what was printed?