3 ms·

Good news reporting is an essential part of democracy. We don't have it anymore. Nobody wants to pay for it. We'll see how it goes.

by carlmr 3y ago

lynx23 3y ago
Lamenting the unwillingness to pay for trash is a hopeless cause. The cat bites its own tale. Most news outlets I know have deteriorated so much in quality that I would never even think about paying for any of that propaganda. Give me a good, balanced, non-pliticized and honest news site, and I might consider supporting them.
- saintkaye 3y ago
  You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already. The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you and the majority that does only affects you in that it excites, scares or entertains you. It wasn’t that news got bad or people got more evil, it’s that the value of information cratered and now it’s not even expensive enough to come with editors.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already Which one are you talking about?
  - account42 3y ago
    > The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you. There is plenty of news that affect me, it just happens to (mostly) not be covered in the news. And when it is it is often propaganda rather than even remotely unbiased reporting.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - lynx23 3y ago
    Is it possible we know each other from StackOverflow perhaps? Because I remember a bunch of people on there who think it is productive to start a posting with "You don’t actually want that".
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I think we met on Reddit? I remember there were loads of people stereotyping Stack Overflow people on there.
- csunbird 3y ago
  I am looking for a neutral, down to the earth style newspaper, focused on world news, not only west/USA. I can definitely pay for that!
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The Economist has pretty broad world news coverage. You probably won't do better than that. (US outlets are much more US--and to some degree Europe--centric. The US used to have decent weekly news magazines but they basically don't exist any longer and, in any case, were fairly US-centric.
  - prox 3y ago
    https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ It gives ratings on headlines and it helps to get an overview of the news.
    - fluidcruft 3y ago
      I truly love ground news, but it constantly forgets where you are in the feed when you open an item so you'll be reading down fifty items or so and open one then go back to the list and have to start scrolling from the top again. It really, really wears on you. I wish they would finally fix it. Despite that major annoyance (it really makes me wonder whether they even dogfood), the Blindspot is so interesting I still power through.
      - prox 3y ago
        Hopefully we have one of the devs reading hackernews :)
    - lynx23 3y ago
      [world-emoji-by-google.png?width=16] Someone please tell 'em about alt tags.
- carlmr 3y ago
  But you see the chicken and egg problem here. News outlets have deteriorated because they can't make money. If people actually paid for them they might have a chance to hire competent people and do investigative journalism. But now they're being paid mostly by ad revenue and a handful of subscribers. So they have to publish trash to optimize for clicks.
  - lynx23 3y ago
    Its even worse. In my country, the government has given a lot of money to media companies, right around covid. That magically made them all comply and report the same government propaganda. However, even non-conspiracy-theory-people have realized what is going on here. After the fact, I believe no sane person would want to give them money, because, you know "the state is already paying em, why should I?"
    - account42 3y ago
      Here the government gives the media companies money all year every year. And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money that I am forced to pay for a contract that I never agreed to or want and can't opt out of.
      - carlmr 3y ago
        Are you both Germans? What is here? >And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no?
        account42 3y ago
        > Are you both Germans? What is here? In my case here is Germany, yes. > If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no? Indirectly, yes but the details are very different. With taxes the government decides on how much tax you pay for various things and then the money goes into the general budget from which the government again allocates funds for various things. Allocating more money towards overpaid entertainment personalities and greedy sports organizations in this model would mean less money the government has to pay for other things so you'd hope they would put some thought in what expenditures are really needed. The budget is also periodically re-evaluated. Taxes are also generally either based on something you choose to do or based on income, meaning they are means tested and usually increase progressively in order to put less of a burden on those that already have less. Taxes are also collected by government institutions which means whatever organizatons are involved in providing the services the taxes pay for won't need to know my banking details or place of residence. The TV fees are very different. Here the legacy media companies get a flat sum from everyone (with some exceptions) without consideration for either what burden this places on the individual payer or what funds are really needed to provide the respective services. Politicians only ever have to think about the amount when the companies involved ask for bigger handouts. Instead of considering of these legacy media companies are still needed with the internet and available, or if we need the current excess (with a separate TV station per state plus two for the country overall), these media companies and the politicans that enable them have decided that making their services available online means that everyone is a potential user and must pay. Unlike taxes these fees are not collected by the finace ministry but by a separate organization representing the media companies which automatically receives the place of residence for everyone registered in Germany.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Did we really stop paying for good reporting? Or did reporting get bad first, and people stopped paying after? I'd pay for a good, reliable news source, but I can't find one at all, and I don't pay.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Not to put pre-1990s journalism on some sort of a pedestal but people basically stopped paying first because their only free option previously was the evening news.
- Lendal 3y ago
  We stopped paying first. As we got more comfortable over the past few decades, we wanted the news to do our bidding and confirm our prejudices. Because you can't please everyone, they failed, and so we stopped paying. Now all we get is corporate PR and AI-generated clickbait like this. It's a pay-to-play world.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Aka The Fourth Estate. I laugh (read: cry) everytime I hear a wannabe "journalist" lament the "threats to Democracy", not realizing - or at least not acknowledging - that they and their ilk have been leading that effort, shamelessly, for years. If there's any group that knows first hand about what "the threat to Democracy" looks like, it's contemporary "journalism".
- carlmr 3y ago
  They are victims and perpetrators at the same time though.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    Victims? How? You're not a victim when your wounds are self-inflicted.
neilv 3y ago
> Nobody wants to pay for it Spoken on a popular site that routinely uses pirate mirrors to circumvent news site paywalls. :)
- prox 3y ago
  The thing is that news has an utilitarian function : we should be able to debate what is going in the world around us. What’s going on in the world is another word for news. News should be free in a way.
  - neilv 3y ago
    I agree that news/journalism should be accessible to everyone. But piracy of paywalled content just provides a relief valve for whatever demand there is for accessibility, and keeps the 'news' a property of parties like Rupert Murdoch (in the case of WSJ).

Good news reporting is an essential part of democracy. We don't have it anymore. Nobody wants to pay for it. We'll see how it goes.

by carlmr 3y ago

Good news reporting is an essential part of democracy. We don't have it anymore. Nobody wants to pay for it. We'll see how it goes.

lynx23 3y ago

Lamenting the unwillingness to pay for trash is a hopeless cause. The cat bites its own tale. Most news outlets I know have deteriorated so much in quality that I would never even think about paying for any of that propaganda. Give me a good, balanced, non-pliticized and honest news site, and I might consider supporting them.

saintkaye 3y ago
You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already. The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you and the majority that does only affects you in that it excites, scares or entertains you. It wasn’t that news got bad or people got more evil, it’s that the value of information cratered and now it’s not even expensive enough to come with editors.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > You don’t actually want that or you’d be paying for it already Which one are you talking about?
- account42 3y ago
  > The problem is that most news doesn’t affect you. There is plenty of news that affect me, it just happens to (mostly) not be covered in the news. And when it is it is often propaganda rather than even remotely unbiased reporting.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lynx23 3y ago
  Is it possible we know each other from StackOverflow perhaps? Because I remember a bunch of people on there who think it is productive to start a posting with "You don’t actually want that".
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I think we met on Reddit? I remember there were loads of people stereotyping Stack Overflow people on there.
csunbird 3y ago
I am looking for a neutral, down to the earth style newspaper, focused on world news, not only west/USA. I can definitely pay for that!
- ghaff 3y ago
  The Economist has pretty broad world news coverage. You probably won't do better than that. (US outlets are much more US--and to some degree Europe--centric. The US used to have decent weekly news magazines but they basically don't exist any longer and, in any case, were fairly US-centric.
- prox 3y ago
  https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ It gives ratings on headlines and it helps to get an overview of the news.
  - fluidcruft 3y ago
    I truly love ground news, but it constantly forgets where you are in the feed when you open an item so you'll be reading down fifty items or so and open one then go back to the list and have to start scrolling from the top again. It really, really wears on you. I wish they would finally fix it. Despite that major annoyance (it really makes me wonder whether they even dogfood), the Blindspot is so interesting I still power through.
    - prox 3y ago
      Hopefully we have one of the devs reading hackernews :)
  - lynx23 3y ago
    [world-emoji-by-google.png?width=16] Someone please tell 'em about alt tags.
carlmr 3y ago
But you see the chicken and egg problem here. News outlets have deteriorated because they can't make money. If people actually paid for them they might have a chance to hire competent people and do investigative journalism. But now they're being paid mostly by ad revenue and a handful of subscribers. So they have to publish trash to optimize for clicks.
- lynx23 3y ago
  Its even worse. In my country, the government has given a lot of money to media companies, right around covid. That magically made them all comply and report the same government propaganda. However, even non-conspiracy-theory-people have realized what is going on here. After the fact, I believe no sane person would want to give them money, because, you know "the state is already paying em, why should I?"
  - account42 3y ago
    Here the government gives the media companies money all year every year. And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money that I am forced to pay for a contract that I never agreed to or want and can't opt out of.
    - carlmr 3y ago
      Are you both Germans? What is here? >And its not even the government's money (from taxes) but my money If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no?
      - account42 3y ago
        > Are you both Germans? What is here? In my case here is Germany, yes. > If you're a tax payer the government's money is your money, no? Indirectly, yes but the details are very different. With taxes the government decides on how much tax you pay for various things and then the money goes into the general budget from which the government again allocates funds for various things. Allocating more money towards overpaid entertainment personalities and greedy sports organizations in this model would mean less money the government has to pay for other things so you'd hope they would put some thought in what expenditures are really needed. The budget is also periodically re-evaluated. Taxes are also generally either based on something you choose to do or based on income, meaning they are means tested and usually increase progressively in order to put less of a burden on those that already have less. Taxes are also collected by government institutions which means whatever organizatons are involved in providing the services the taxes pay for won't need to know my banking details or place of residence. The TV fees are very different. Here the legacy media companies get a flat sum from everyone (with some exceptions) without consideration for either what burden this places on the individual payer or what funds are really needed to provide the respective services. Politicians only ever have to think about the amount when the companies involved ask for bigger handouts. Instead of considering of these legacy media companies are still needed with the internet and available, or if we need the current excess (with a separate TV station per state plus two for the country overall), these media companies and the politicans that enable them have decided that making their services available online means that everyone is a potential user and must pay. Unlike taxes these fees are not collected by the finace ministry but by a separate organization representing the media companies which automatically receives the place of residence for everyone registered in Germany.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

Did we really stop paying for good reporting? Or did reporting get bad first, and people stopped paying after? I'd pay for a good, reliable news source, but I can't find one at all, and I don't pay.

ghaff 3y ago
Not to put pre-1990s journalism on some sort of a pedestal but people basically stopped paying first because their only free option previously was the evening news.
Lendal 3y ago
We stopped paying first. As we got more comfortable over the past few decades, we wanted the news to do our bidding and confirm our prejudices. Because you can't please everyone, they failed, and so we stopped paying. Now all we get is corporate PR and AI-generated clickbait like this. It's a pay-to-play world.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Aka The Fourth Estate. I laugh (read: cry) everytime I hear a wannabe "journalist" lament the "threats to Democracy", not realizing - or at least not acknowledging - that they and their ilk have been leading that effort, shamelessly, for years. If there's any group that knows first hand about what "the threat to Democracy" looks like, it's contemporary "journalism".

carlmr 3y ago
They are victims and perpetrators at the same time though.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Victims? How? You're not a victim when your wounds are self-inflicted.

neilv 3y ago

> Nobody wants to pay for it Spoken on a popular site that routinely uses pirate mirrors to circumvent news site paywalls. :)

prox 3y ago
The thing is that news has an utilitarian function : we should be able to debate what is going in the world around us. What’s going on in the world is another word for news. News should be free in a way.
- neilv 3y ago
  I agree that news/journalism should be accessible to everyone. But piracy of paywalled content just provides a relief valve for whatever demand there is for accessibility, and keeps the 'news' a property of parties like Rupert Murdoch (in the case of WSJ).