5 ms·

Journalism is expensive. Has anybody really figured out sustainable funding for it?

seanhunter 4y ago
It's hard. The guardian newspaper in the UK is funded by a trust that was endowed by one rich dude https://www.theguardian.com/about https://www.theguardian.com/about
- throwaway049 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Stevvo 4y ago
    There's more than four people on the internet, you know?
    - throwaway049 4y ago
      Sure, but Chiles has friends in high places!
  - Mizza 4y ago
    Adrian Chiles is a midwit savant and I cherish him.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  [flagged]
SllX 4y ago
Yes, the same as before: subscriptions and ads. There’s just less direct competition within the industry for those still standing and a lot more competition from outside of the industry for the time and money that would have gone to journalism.
version_five 4y ago
Is the Economist profitable? That's one example that comes to mind of a potentially viable model - less clickbait, shorter news cycle, more depth, with a print option. Online-only news has been a race to the bottom, I'd guess that profitability is more likely at the higher end.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SllX 4y ago
  Yes[1]. As are organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, the New York Times, Gannett, and Hearst Communications. [1]: https://www.economistgroup.com/results https://www.economistgroup.com/results
  - uncertainrhymes 4y ago
    That is a good list -- interestingly, only Gannett (USA Today, amongst many other papers) and Reuters don't have paywalls. That isn't a criticism, just recognition that even though the other sites are still ad supported, that alone isn't enough.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Gannett's many local newspapers definitely have paywalls. They've also been pretty unprofitable in recent years. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GCI/earnings https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GCI/earnings
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  They don’t really do investigative journalism though. Most of their articles are summary + opinion
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
It was sustainable until Google eviscerated them.
- criddell 4y ago
  What about Craigslist killing classified ads?
- thestevesie 4y ago
  cute talking point. but it actually turns out that Google was helping them. see the countries that have implemented laws demanding that Google pay news outlets, the news outlets got dropped and their traffic plummeted, so they demanding things go back the way they were before Of course, critical analysis is beyond the average know-it-all who gets their opinions from headlines with no real analysis
  - positron6000 4y ago
    citation?
mfer 4y ago
Some thoughts... First, you need organizations interested in sustainable and not more and more shareholder returns. Sustainable is a different way to look at the financial planning. Second, newspapers have long been funded by ads. But, the current structure of the ad business puts most of the profits in the pockets of the middlemen. Newspapers would need to re-evaluate ads and how to functionally be successful. Third, you only need so many national or international level news organizations. Local news brings a of opportunity. Investment there may be worth while (I'd like to think so). Basically, we need to change the way we think about it. Innovation.
- coldpie 4y ago
  > Third, you only need so many national or international level news organizations. Local news brings a of opportunity. Investment there may be worth while (I'd like to think so). Yeah, I agree. Lots of local papers have been bought up and hollowed out by national organizations. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Smaller & more focused is the key. One reason I don't pay for the big news outlets, and even the local big-name newspapers, is because they are owned by and employ some really disgusting people, who I don't want to financially support. The bigger you are, the more likely that is to happen. More choice of many smaller outlets means you can be choosier. As a single example, here in the Twin Cities a handful of journalists are trying out the model at Racket[1]. They're mostly reader-funded, and because they're not doing big national stories, they don't need a shitload of subscribers or scummy ad money to keep the lights on. There's some hope to be found here. [1] A look at their first year of finances: https://racketmn.com/rackets-year-in-review-august-2021-july-2022 https://racketmn.com/rackets-year-in-review-august-2021-july...
danso 4y ago
Unlike many news orgs, ProPublica's funding has managed to stay solid during the post-President Trump years — $60M according to their 2021 990, vs. $51M in 2019. I worked there in its first years, when nearly its entire $10M budget came from its founding donor. But PP, along with Axios and Politico, is an exception that proves the rule. The NYT is probably the only legacy news org that has an optimistic long-term future, due to its last-man-standing position and diversification into tech and games. (TV news is a different situation, obviously Fox News has done very well. CNN had major cuts during the Discovery-Warner merger, but I don't think they're on a downward spiral) https://www.propublica.org/reports https://www.propublica.org/reports https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/142007220 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/142...
- jandrese 4y ago
  Fox News has done very well because they aren't a journalism organization. They just repeat what their audience wants to hear and laugh all the way to the bank. If what they're talking about is in any way related to the truth it is entirely coincidental. They have in multiple lawsuits now argued that they are not a news organization and can not be held to any journalistic standards. Real journalism is difficult and ultimately expensive. Telling people what they want to hear is cheap and easy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - VancouverMan 4y ago
    > Real journalism is difficult and ultimately expensive. I'm not certain that that's the case, at least in Canada. Time and time again, much of the lowest-quality reporting/journalism I've seen has been from the largest Canadian news organizations that have significant resources at their disposal. On the other hand, most of the best journalism I've seen has been from the organizations that are far smaller, and with far fewer resources. It has even gotten to the point where relatively average individuals who are merely live streaming or sharing videos/photos of events end up providing more detailed, representative, objective, and timelier reporting than the large news organizations.
jaredwiener 4y ago
We've been working on it for https://forth.news https://forth.news -- essentially a newsfeed for news. The thinking is that in the old days, when you had a print newspaper, there were ads and articles, but they were completely decoupled. You could read an article, or just the headline, or just glance at a photo, but regardless, you would see the ads. Now, of course, you have to decide to click through. BUT -- and this is the key part -- the newspaper-style ads still exist, they just exist upstream in the flow, and giving the revenue to the aggregators, not the people doing the reporting. (It also leads to incredibly misaligned incentives between the aggregators and the publishers, leading to things like clickbait...) Our hope is to be able to close that loop, share the revenue from in-feed ads with the reporting partners, and try to get away from the Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc model.
game_the0ry 4y ago
Good journalism will alway be in demand. I personally like Breaking Points and I am happy to pay for it. [1] You wont find good journalism in NYT and Washington Post anymore bc they have not figured out that high quality, subscriber-only content is more sustainable than advertising. You will increasingly find good journalism if you subscribe to individual journalists that are not beholden to their advertisers. [1] https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/
legitster 4y ago
Your local newspaper subscription (physical or online) should come bundled with a NYTimes/WSJ/WP subscription.
CoastalCoder 4y ago
The New London Day [0] is apparently held in a public trust [1]. I'm not clear if that totally covers its operational costs, but it sounds like a good start. [0] https://www.theday.com/ https://www.theday.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_(New_London) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_(New_London)
willcipriano 4y ago
> Journalism is expensive Is it? Why? Journalists don't make a lot of money. A lot of them are trust fund babies because you can't write for the New York Times and live in NY without outside help.
Pxtl 4y ago
1) Government (until Musk decides he hates you all). 2) Find a rich patron. 3) Disinformation for hire. or a combination of all 3.
SN76477 4y ago
Freakonomics I believe it was, had a podcast on how Journalism is a public service. Meaning, it should be funded by grants. Why and how is it a public service? I wish I could remember the episode. 1. When journalists investigate their local politicians it helps keep those politicians clean. 2. Strong local papers and journalism is taken into account by loan officers who in turn save the municipalities tons of money by shaving off a percentage of a loan. This is massive returns when it takes 20million to build a local high schools, Libraries, etc.
briandear 4y ago
Create content people are willing to pay for. Most national level reporting is simply partisan garbage. They find stories to support an agenda rather than reporting stories without an agenda. Everyone is so jaded because every story has an agenda. For example, how many stories about Trump finances have been written by mainstream outlets? Countless. How many stories about Biden’s finances? Very few — unless they are right wing outlets. Is any journalist digging into the fact that we have US soldiers in direct combat in Ukraine? Has any outlet dug into violations of the War Powers Act? How many outlets have dug deeply into the corruption of Houston city and county government? How many stories about corruption in municipal initiatives? Garbage contracts? Or how congressmen are paying consulting companies that hire their spouses for no-show jobs? (As in the case of Dan Crenshaw.) How many news outlets have done anything in depth about election irregularities other than simply writing stories that claim it doesn’t happen? How many news outlets have written stories about Covid corruption? Pfizer corruption? Vaccine research lies? Very few. But we know all about Trump’s dealings with porn stars.

It's hard. The guardian newspaper in the UK is funded by a trust that was endowed by one rich dude https://www.theguardian.com/about https://www.theguardian.com/about

throwaway049 4y ago
[flagged]
- Stevvo 4y ago
  There's more than four people on the internet, you know?
  - throwaway049 4y ago
    Sure, but Chiles has friends in high places!
- Mizza 4y ago
  Adrian Chiles is a midwit savant and I cherish him.
secondcoming 4y ago
[flagged]

SllX 4y ago

Yes, the same as before: subscriptions and ads. There’s just less direct competition within the industry for those still standing and a lot more competition from outside of the industry for the time and money that would have gone to journalism.

version_five 4y ago

Is the Economist profitable? That's one example that comes to mind of a potentially viable model - less clickbait, shorter news cycle, more depth, with a print option. Online-only news has been a race to the bottom, I'd guess that profitability is more likely at the higher end.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SllX 4y ago
Yes[1]. As are organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, the New York Times, Gannett, and Hearst Communications. [1]: https://www.economistgroup.com/results https://www.economistgroup.com/results
- uncertainrhymes 4y ago
  That is a good list -- interestingly, only Gannett (USA Today, amongst many other papers) and Reuters don't have paywalls. That isn't a criticism, just recognition that even though the other sites are still ad supported, that alone isn't enough.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Gannett's many local newspapers definitely have paywalls. They've also been pretty unprofitable in recent years. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GCI/earnings https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GCI/earnings
dc-programmer 4y ago
They don’t really do investigative journalism though. Most of their articles are summary + opinion

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

It was sustainable until Google eviscerated them.

criddell 4y ago
What about Craigslist killing classified ads?
thestevesie 4y ago
cute talking point. but it actually turns out that Google was helping them. see the countries that have implemented laws demanding that Google pay news outlets, the news outlets got dropped and their traffic plummeted, so they demanding things go back the way they were before Of course, critical analysis is beyond the average know-it-all who gets their opinions from headlines with no real analysis
- positron6000 4y ago
  citation?

mfer 4y ago

Some thoughts... First, you need organizations interested in sustainable and not more and more shareholder returns. Sustainable is a different way to look at the financial planning. Second, newspapers have long been funded by ads. But, the current structure of the ad business puts most of the profits in the pockets of the middlemen. Newspapers would need to re-evaluate ads and how to functionally be successful. Third, you only need so many national or international level news organizations. Local news brings a of opportunity. Investment there may be worth while (I'd like to think so). Basically, we need to change the way we think about it. Innovation.

coldpie 4y ago
> Third, you only need so many national or international level news organizations. Local news brings a of opportunity. Investment there may be worth while (I'd like to think so). Yeah, I agree. Lots of local papers have been bought up and hollowed out by national organizations. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Smaller & more focused is the key. One reason I don't pay for the big news outlets, and even the local big-name newspapers, is because they are owned by and employ some really disgusting people, who I don't want to financially support. The bigger you are, the more likely that is to happen. More choice of many smaller outlets means you can be choosier. As a single example, here in the Twin Cities a handful of journalists are trying out the model at Racket[1]. They're mostly reader-funded, and because they're not doing big national stories, they don't need a shitload of subscribers or scummy ad money to keep the lights on. There's some hope to be found here. [1] A look at their first year of finances: https://racketmn.com/rackets-year-in-review-august-2021-july-2022 https://racketmn.com/rackets-year-in-review-august-2021-july...

danso 4y ago

Unlike many news orgs, ProPublica's funding has managed to stay solid during the post-President Trump years — $60M according to their 2021 990, vs. $51M in 2019. I worked there in its first years, when nearly its entire $10M budget came from its founding donor. But PP, along with Axios and Politico, is an exception that proves the rule. The NYT is probably the only legacy news org that has an optimistic long-term future, due to its last-man-standing position and diversification into tech and games. (TV news is a different situation, obviously Fox News has done very well. CNN had major cuts during the Discovery-Warner merger, but I don't think they're on a downward spiral) https://www.propublica.org/reports https://www.propublica.org/reports https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/142007220 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/142...

jandrese 4y ago
Fox News has done very well because they aren't a journalism organization. They just repeat what their audience wants to hear and laugh all the way to the bank. If what they're talking about is in any way related to the truth it is entirely coincidental. They have in multiple lawsuits now argued that they are not a news organization and can not be held to any journalistic standards. Real journalism is difficult and ultimately expensive. Telling people what they want to hear is cheap and easy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- VancouverMan 4y ago
  > Real journalism is difficult and ultimately expensive. I'm not certain that that's the case, at least in Canada. Time and time again, much of the lowest-quality reporting/journalism I've seen has been from the largest Canadian news organizations that have significant resources at their disposal. On the other hand, most of the best journalism I've seen has been from the organizations that are far smaller, and with far fewer resources. It has even gotten to the point where relatively average individuals who are merely live streaming or sharing videos/photos of events end up providing more detailed, representative, objective, and timelier reporting than the large news organizations.

jaredwiener 4y ago

We've been working on it for https://forth.news https://forth.news -- essentially a newsfeed for news. The thinking is that in the old days, when you had a print newspaper, there were ads and articles, but they were completely decoupled. You could read an article, or just the headline, or just glance at a photo, but regardless, you would see the ads. Now, of course, you have to decide to click through. BUT -- and this is the key part -- the newspaper-style ads still exist, they just exist upstream in the flow, and giving the revenue to the aggregators, not the people doing the reporting. (It also leads to incredibly misaligned incentives between the aggregators and the publishers, leading to things like clickbait...) Our hope is to be able to close that loop, share the revenue from in-feed ads with the reporting partners, and try to get away from the Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc model.

game_the0ry 4y ago

Good journalism will alway be in demand. I personally like Breaking Points and I am happy to pay for it. [1] You wont find good journalism in NYT and Washington Post anymore bc they have not figured out that high quality, subscriber-only content is more sustainable than advertising. You will increasingly find good journalism if you subscribe to individual journalists that are not beholden to their advertisers. [1] https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/

legitster 4y ago

Your local newspaper subscription (physical or online) should come bundled with a NYTimes/WSJ/WP subscription.

CoastalCoder 4y ago

The New London Day [0] is apparently held in a public trust [1]. I'm not clear if that totally covers its operational costs, but it sounds like a good start. [0] https://www.theday.com/ https://www.theday.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_(New_London) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_(New_London)

willcipriano 4y ago

> Journalism is expensive Is it? Why? Journalists don't make a lot of money. A lot of them are trust fund babies because you can't write for the New York Times and live in NY without outside help.

Pxtl 4y ago

1) Government (until Musk decides he hates you all). 2) Find a rich patron. 3) Disinformation for hire. or a combination of all 3.

SN76477 4y ago

Freakonomics I believe it was, had a podcast on how Journalism is a public service. Meaning, it should be funded by grants. Why and how is it a public service? I wish I could remember the episode. 1. When journalists investigate their local politicians it helps keep those politicians clean. 2. Strong local papers and journalism is taken into account by loan officers who in turn save the municipalities tons of money by shaving off a percentage of a loan. This is massive returns when it takes 20million to build a local high schools, Libraries, etc.

briandear 4y ago

Create content people are willing to pay for. Most national level reporting is simply partisan garbage. They find stories to support an agenda rather than reporting stories without an agenda. Everyone is so jaded because every story has an agenda. For example, how many stories about Trump finances have been written by mainstream outlets? Countless. How many stories about Biden’s finances? Very few — unless they are right wing outlets. Is any journalist digging into the fact that we have US soldiers in direct combat in Ukraine? Has any outlet dug into violations of the War Powers Act? How many outlets have dug deeply into the corruption of Houston city and county government? How many stories about corruption in municipal initiatives? Garbage contracts? Or how congressmen are paying consulting companies that hire their spouses for no-show jobs? (As in the case of Dan Crenshaw.) How many news outlets have done anything in depth about election irregularities other than simply writing stories that claim it doesn’t happen? How many news outlets have written stories about Covid corruption? Pfizer corruption? Vaccine research lies? Very few. But we know all about Trump’s dealings with porn stars.