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I wonder if a volume collective license agreement with ISPs would do it. I still find good, incisive reporting to be highly useful. The problem is the same as w

I wonder if a volume collective license agreement with ISPs would do it. I still find good, incisive reporting to be highly useful. The problem is the same as with subscribing to streaming services these days: there's too many. I might read from several sources but they all want payment information, authentication credentials, I have to be logged in, etc. Would anyone notice if there was an extra $1.50 tacked on to your Internet bill? Some organization collects it from the ISPs and redistributes to the new sites based on viewership statistics from a trusted third party with a reserve for new/independent/grassroots/minority sources. Then I don't have to log in, renew my subscription to each site, and they still get funded for reporting. I'm not super connected to the media publishing world or anything but it seems to me like a concentration-of-power thing is creating incentives for sensational/entertainment reporting than journalism. A system where billionaires wouldn't have a reason to buy up all of the sources for their circus would be nice.

noasaservice 4y ago
And thats called predatory bundling. If I want X service, I'll pay for X service on my own.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  How is providing access to any publisher at a flat rate predatory in anything remotely like the sense of, say, inflicting the occupants of a public space to advertising subscribed to the highest bidder?
dredmorbius 4y ago
That's the upshot of my own wall'o-text: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31449413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31449413 I think you're lowballing the cost, though the total still remains low. At the 2005 advertising peak, ads income (a cost born by the public through product purchases) was $50 billion. Subscription expense in 2020 was another $11 billion. Pro-rated per person among the 330 million population of the US: - Advertising: $50 billion -- $150/person ($12.60/person-month) - Subscription: $11 billion -- $33/person ($2.75/person-month) - Combined: $61 billion -- $183/person ($15.40/person-month) https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers... An advertising-free subscription assuming 2.5 persons per household on average would run less than $40/mo. With advertising, the cost would be less than $8/mo. This would fund journalism at the levels of 2005, whilst making the work product available to every household in the US. We could factor in all book publishing revenues, roughly $25 billion (2019), for another $6.50/mo.[1] Again, pro-rating this by household wealth / value, would make information equitably avaialable to all. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://publishers.org/news/aap-statshot-annual-report-book-publishing-revenues-up-slightly-to-25-93-billion-in-2019/ https://publishers.org/news/aap-statshot-annual-report-book-...

noasaservice 4y ago

And thats called predatory bundling. If I want X service, I'll pay for X service on my own.

dredmorbius 4y ago
How is providing access to any publisher at a flat rate predatory in anything remotely like the sense of, say, inflicting the occupants of a public space to advertising subscribed to the highest bidder?

dredmorbius 4y ago

That's the upshot of my own wall'o-text: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31449413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31449413 I think you're lowballing the cost, though the total still remains low. At the 2005 advertising peak, ads income (a cost born by the public through product purchases) was $50 billion. Subscription expense in 2020 was another $11 billion. Pro-rated per person among the 330 million population of the US: - Advertising: $50 billion -- $150/person ($12.60/person-month) - Subscription: $11 billion -- $33/person ($2.75/person-month) - Combined: $61 billion -- $183/person ($15.40/person-month) https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers... An advertising-free subscription assuming 2.5 persons per household on average would run less than $40/mo. With advertising, the cost would be less than $8/mo. This would fund journalism at the levels of 2005, whilst making the work product available to every household in the US. We could factor in all book publishing revenues, roughly $25 billion (2019), for another $6.50/mo.[1] Again, pro-rating this by household wealth / value, would make information equitably avaialable to all. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://publishers.org/news/aap-statshot-annual-report-book-publishing-revenues-up-slightly-to-25-93-billion-in-2019/ https://publishers.org/news/aap-statshot-annual-report-book-...