I've said it before, but I feel like I need to keep saying it: If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/

I've said it before, but I feel like I need to keep saying it: If the people actually using/consuming a product aren't willing to pay the cost required to make/produce said product, then that's probably a good indicator that the product doesn't have enough value to justify its existence. If the Verge can't convince enough people to pay for their output, I'd argue it's not worth keeping around. Advertising ruins the producer/consumer relationship and incentivizes behaviors that disadvantage the consumer and push the producer away from their original purpose. If the Verge wants to diversify income, then they should provide a product that has value to a wider audience. That doesn't mean that every single person consuming/using the product needs to pay either. Patreon and similar services have proven that if what you make is of high enough quality and provides enough value, it's possible to convince a large enough subset of the consumers to pay enough to cover the costs of production. Especially with online services where the cost difference between producing for 1 person vs 1000 is nearly negligible. The few can, and often do, subsidize the many. And if that changes over time, then the product ceases to be valuable enough to be worth producing and should simply stop being made. And I'd say this is even true of news and things that people might argue are for the public good. In my opinion, most "news" today isn't actual informative news and doesn't really serve the public. But of the vanishing little left that does, if it informs and educates the citizenry in a way that improves the lives and stability of the country as a whole, and if its natural cost is more than can be reasonably covered by willing consumers, then there's a reasonable argument for covering the cost with taxes. Put sufficient legal barriers between the government funding and the content being produced to prevent government manipulation/propaganda and make sure the press can operate unimpeded. My best idea for such a government funded news source is to write into law that said news source's budget is dependent solely upon country population and country GDP, all staffing decisions are made internally, and leaders are decided by citizen vote, but I'm sure there are other ways people can come up with for maintaining a free but government/tax funded press agency. But ad-funded (of which I think even public radio/tv has effectively become), creates perverse incentives that drive the mission away from actually informing and educating. People can still pay for tech reviews, or travel advice, talking head current events opinion shows, or whatever news is in its current form if they want. Privately owned/operated press can still exist if it's useful enough for people to find it valuable and worth the cost. But advertising just ruins everything eventually.