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Dear HN. Please support journalism. Bloomberg may not be the best example, but there are many news organizations that rely on subscriptions in order to pay thei

Dear HN. Please support journalism. Bloomberg may not be the best example, but there are many news organizations that rely on subscriptions in order to pay their editorial staff. News costs money produce, and ads only do so much.

Intermernet 2y ago
It's not the place of news aggregators (especially crowd-sourced ones) to cater to media outlets. It's the other way around. These companies aren't publishing news out of some moral code, they're commercial entities. I can get most breaking news from the general dispersion of information on the net. I can read various primary sources on pretty much anything that happens, with more reliable factuality, from a small bunch of people who aren't monetizing the information. If you're a journalist who actually provides a unique perspective, and has an insightful analysis of what's going on, then you deserve money. If you're just collating a bunch of information from other, freely available sources, and then spinning some click-bait / appeal to the masses for engagement story on top, you deserve something very different to money. If you're actively promoting and profiting off the latter style of news distribution, you deserve something different again. Ads are a completely different beast that deserves to die. Every time this debate comes up it seems like people want to argue for the industry they feel kicks them in the teeth the least. Independent journalism exists (across the entire socio-political spectrum). Find some, preferably spanning a wide gamut of opinion, and support it. Even if you don't agree with it. It's better than supporting either the lazy, corporate regurgitation of freely available information which defines most large press organizations, or the monetization and manipulation of people that defines the advertising industry.
deleted 2y ago
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apantel 2y ago
What costs money is mostly aggregating, packaging, and selling news. How many media establishments are actually the first to report on things? Most media establishments are just repackaging and selling stories that have already hit. Something happens in the world, there’s a Twitterstorm starting with people at ground zero of the event — that’s the actual “news”. Then the media companies all scramble to package and sell the story of that event to their subscribers. And in fact that whole song and dance is mostly about selling the subscriber base to their advertisers and “trusted third parties”.

Intermernet 2y ago

It's not the place of news aggregators (especially crowd-sourced ones) to cater to media outlets. It's the other way around. These companies aren't publishing news out of some moral code, they're commercial entities. I can get most breaking news from the general dispersion of information on the net. I can read various primary sources on pretty much anything that happens, with more reliable factuality, from a small bunch of people who aren't monetizing the information. If you're a journalist who actually provides a unique perspective, and has an insightful analysis of what's going on, then you deserve money. If you're just collating a bunch of information from other, freely available sources, and then spinning some click-bait / appeal to the masses for engagement story on top, you deserve something very different to money. If you're actively promoting and profiting off the latter style of news distribution, you deserve something different again. Ads are a completely different beast that deserves to die. Every time this debate comes up it seems like people want to argue for the industry they feel kicks them in the teeth the least. Independent journalism exists (across the entire socio-political spectrum). Find some, preferably spanning a wide gamut of opinion, and support it. Even if you don't agree with it. It's better than supporting either the lazy, corporate regurgitation of freely available information which defines most large press organizations, or the monetization and manipulation of people that defines the advertising industry.

deleted 2y ago

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apantel 2y ago

What costs money is mostly aggregating, packaging, and selling news. How many media establishments are actually the first to report on things? Most media establishments are just repackaging and selling stories that have already hit. Something happens in the world, there’s a Twitterstorm starting with people at ground zero of the event — that’s the actual “news”. Then the media companies all scramble to package and sell the story of that event to their subscribers. And in fact that whole song and dance is mostly about selling the subscriber base to their advertisers and “trusted third parties”.