5 ms·

The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salari

The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?

mcmcmc 5mo ago
If people don’t want to pay, then they don’t actually value the news. I pay for publications that I trust and want to continue reading. The key is finding a niche where the news organization can produce quality reporting that people actually value. “Free News” is just another ad business.
- troupo 5mo ago
  Significantly fewer people would pay for objective reporting than for, say, Fox News. Partly because Fox News would be much cheaper.
- kanelincoln 5mo ago
  Do you think that the desire to pay for a thing is the only indicator of whether that thing is valued? If not, what do you mean by "[people] don't actually value the news"?
  - carlosjobim 5mo ago
    It's a great indicator.
  - mcmcmc 5mo ago
    I think it’s an indicator of demand which shows comparative value in the context of household spending. If you have enough money to cover your basic needs and then some, but you choose to put that extra money towards something else, that reveals a preference for that thing over other products/services you could choose to purchase. If you only want something when you don’t have to pay for it and would never actually buy it even if you had the budget, then yeah I would contend you don’t actually want it. You’re just taking it because it’s there, and you can. “Free” services are fundamentally anticompetitive markets, which can work if it’s a non-profit or government service. When it’s a for-profit business you get perverse incentives and network effects concentrating wealth and power in smaller and smaller pockets, extracting it from users instead of an exchange of no value with customers. For-profit free news is the problem.
idle_zealot 5mo ago
There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests? Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.
- afavour 5mo ago
  I see that as more of an ecosystem problem. In a world where multiple news organizations have cracked the nut of providing free news you rely on different outlets providing different perspectives. I'm not sure it's possible to make a news organization have absolutely no bias at all.
  - idle_zealot 5mo ago
    I'm not convinced it's even conceivable in the abstract to have a news organization with "no bias." You have to make editorial decisions based on something. If you make then based on what you think your readers ought to know, your ideology, values, and understanding of the world inform those decisions and comprise your bias. An objective news outlet would be... what? A live feed of every square inch of the planet provided with no commentary? What we should demand is not unbiased reporting, but transparency in editorial decision making and proactive disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.
- autoexec 5mo ago
  I think it'd be a good start to have stories selected and reviewed by a diverse team of editors and fact checkers to make sure that the reporting is factual and that it isn't presented from a limited and biased perspective. You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people. That alone would be a huge improvement to most news sources I see today which outright lie and/or are biased in which stories they report on and how they report on them.
conception 5mo ago
It’s unfortunate we haven’t solved the micro-payment problem. Crypto was an obvious solution but anything would require a hefty network effect. But imagine like a starbucks card or whatever you have your micropayment card, and it auto reloads when it hits zero with 20 bucks or whatever. When you visit the times, a modal pops up, “This article costs $0.02. Read it? y/n or $1 for a day pass”. Sure pirates will get around it but they already do. Just make it grandma easy and you’re done. It’s just the money probably isn’t good enough for VC dollars to roll something out with enough big players to jump in.
- afavour 5mo ago
  That model doesn't really work, unfortunately: https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-a-theoretically/ https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-... It has been tried a bunch of times. I think a core problem is unlike most micro transaction opportunities you're asking customers to pay money to be told bad news. To buy something that will make them miserable. There's a fundamental disconnect there that means people aren't going to be inclined to do it.
  - Cider9986 5mo ago
    The conclusion of that article is that the model doesn't work because of processing fees and friction from entering information. The author discounts Bitcoin because it has high fees, but some cryptos have 0 fees and others have very low fees. With crypto you also don't need to enter any information, simply scan the QR code and enter the amount you'd like to pay. If crypto was adopted, the model would work just fine. Personally, I always donate 10 cents to a dollar in Monero when I read an article[1] that I enjoyed that offers crypto donation addresses. Primal[2] has built a crypto wallet into their app and you can see people send "zaps" of Bitcoin when they appreciate a post and it has adoption. [1] https://www.therage.co/letter-1-keonne-rodriguez/ https://www.therage.co/letter-1-keonne-rodriguez/ https://www.therage.co/donate/ https://www.therage.co/donate/ https://zola.ink https://zola.ink [2] https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/pop-ch01#:~:text=2%2C184 https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/pop-ch01#:~:text=2%2C184
andriy_koval 5mo ago
> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? you provide free service, build brand and ecosystem, and charge for extra services, e.g. automatic-monitoring specific news topic, analytics, faster delivery on scale, etc. and even ads/ads free accounts
romanows 5mo ago
NPR/public radio has been doing a decent job without much obtrusive third-party advertising.
raincole 5mo ago
Political parties and foreign actors, eventually. Propaganda pieces are usually free to access.
swader999 5mo ago
Maybe that is part of the plan, eliminate truth so that everyone just gives up. Perhaps crowd sourced facts/news with legit upvoting, weighted upvoting based on historic 'credibility'. Top contributions get a share of add revenue.
- kg 5mo ago
  Doesn't crowd sourcing and upvotes and revenue for high ranking just mean people will generate what's popular to get paid for it? Will there be money for unpopular truths somehow?
  - swader999 5mo ago
    Yes and that affects all existing 'news' channels too. It comes down to general education levels and that has similar bad incentives in play.
carlosjobim 5mo ago
Mass syndication has worked splendidly for all other media. But textual media publishers still refuse. They have to learn from Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, and such and start offering bulk subscriptions for a fair price. It's better for the individual news providers to earn 10 cents each from 10 million subscribers, than to earn 10 dollars each from 10 000 subscribers.
oersted 5mo ago
There's an obvious answer: a good public news service. I know, I know, that one is problematic too. Some countries have pulled it off relatively successfully, but it's never perfect. The thing is, this is exactly what the government is for: services that individuals don't want to pay for, but are important to have as a society. This is possible if there's a real division of powers in the government. Yes, that sounds increasingly unlikely now, but it's no fantasy, it has been achieved in many different places and moments in history, to a reasonable degree. I mean, there's a reason why journalism is called "the fourth estate", maybe it should literally be the fourth independent government branch alongside the executive, legislative and judicial. We are in the "information age" after all. Or at least a relatively independent and technocratic government agency with decent funding. And don't tell me that "we have it but nobody watches it", then it's just not properly funded or supported. The BBC is extremely competitive alongside commercial news media, both in the UK and internationally. Many countries have similarly strong public media even if it is not internationally as well known, because of the language barrier.
- tr_user 5mo ago
  NPR got defunded and here in australia, the ABC are run by political appointees while the rest of the corpo media start branding it as leftist talking points. You can't fix this if the funding source isn't independent and it's competing against a lot more money
  - socalgal2 5mo ago
    It’s hilarious that you think the issue was funding and not the fact that NPR was and is a voice for the left and the opposition thought it was unfair for the government to be paying for one side’s propaganda. If you can’t hear it you aren’t listening
vslira 5mo ago
I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts: Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in. Maybe a liberal, democratic state could successfully build something similar for news organizations: all citizens have to pay a "journalism tax", which they then channel to a subscription for a vehicle they trust. Yes, a million ways this can be abused, the government may censor opposition, etc. I know, I said the idea wasn't great. But worth pondering. Also, this is based on a very stylized understanding of how said German tax works (I'm not German and never looked at it that deeply) btw I understand this is the opposite of "free", but more about journalism financing in general.
- vablings 5mo ago
  The issue is that this is on a balance sheet of a budget somewhere and an autocrat will selectively choose to cut with a knife such they speak ill of them. See the current debate with the FCC in the USA. I am sure there is some kind of financial instrument that could be structured in a way to pay down a news org with public money that cannot just be slashed at whim and will.
  - ambicapter 5mo ago
    So, you don't think any government program at all will work in this case?
- bjelkeman-again 5mo ago
  Several European countries have something like it. I can only find a very brief article in English on Wikipedia and a longer one in Swedish. But it seems to be reasonably successful in my experience. The Swedish article mentions: Sweden, other Nordic countries, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d
- 5mo ago
mmooss 5mo ago
> If the people arent interested in paying They are, according to the OP: https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-paywall-removal-details/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-payw...
boplicity 5mo ago
Don't try to be "objective" or "impartial." That's an impossible task, and anyone claiming to do so is being dishonest. Instead, own your biases. Make them explicit and public. That way people can understand were you're coming from, and take that into account. There will always be bias in any reporting. It's better to make it visible than to pretend it doesn't exist. This means having a clear perspective and "owning" that perspective, instead of shying away from it. Coincidentally, this type of thinking can dramatically increase brand loyalty and trust.
- aidenn0 5mo ago
  Anyone claiming that they are trying to be impartial is being dishonest?
  - boplicity 5mo ago
    You can't be impartial; everyone has their own sets of biases that they can't get around. These are sometimes obvious, sometimes not, but they're always there. It's not necessarily intentionally dishonest to say you're impartial, but it fundamentally is dishonest to claim you're capable of the impossible.
    - aidenn0 5mo ago
      You seem to be conflating "try" with "being" (and possibly also "a little biased" with "a lot biased"). If I currently have a 12 minute mile and I try to get it down to 6 minutes, but only mange to get it down to 8 minutes I have both: 1. Not lied about my goal 2. Accomplished something similar to my goal.
- frumplestlatz 5mo ago
  Anyone arguing for “owning your bias” is trying to justify using media to influence instead of inform. We can never be perfectly unbiased, but we can certainly try. We dedicated entire higher education programs to the process of doing exactly that — it was called journalism.
EGreg 5mo ago
Wait, I never understood why we need "intrepid reporters" hired by a certain company to enter a war zone, for instance. Everyone has cameras now. They're ubiquitous. What we really need is collaboration online to make sense of the footage being uploaded. And the same for any kind of news. Why do we need the capitalist model again? Look at Wikipedia, Linux, open source software, and more.
- mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago
  Exactly. News is by definition storytelling, and I don't think it's healthy to conflate the two or to pretend that storytellers are reporting on facts.
- HWR_14 5mo ago
  A intrepid reporter with a reputation is less likely to upload doctored footage for propaganda purposes.
insane_dreamer 5mo ago
Publicly funded, like the BBC "tax" in the UK which they used to have (not sure if they still do?) Or PBS/NPR in the US, funded by taxpayers. Worked reasonably well, and fairly independently, for decades until Trump defunded it.
nemoniac 5mo ago
Isn't it equally important to ask the question:how exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you can afford the salaries?
observationist 5mo ago
The problem has been differing narratives from different sources with different biases, motives, and objectives. The solution is a thorough interrogation of different sources, cross-checking and validating novel claims, using a Bayesian approach to maintaining a model of the world. Not rigid, but roughly scientific. Most people can't afford to do that, so they pick a proxy from among the many individuals that do the work of sorting and filtering and comparing and validating news from a wide spectrum. Some proxies are decent, some are not, and come with their own biases and skew. The solution is high intelligence local AI that maintains a world model for you, providing you with updates based on your interests and cross-validated world events, with a rigorous record of sources and reliability. Anything short of that is just repackaged proxy games. On the plus side, Asmongold or Hasan Piker are the low bar to beat. Haha. People are so well informed and educated now that they have access to the interwebs.
nurple 5mo ago
Easy. One of the primary reason that I don't subscribe to any kind of news anymore is exactly because of all the advertising and the being owned by giant money and power concerns. I would happily subscribe at a quite a bit higher rate for news orgs that go non-profit/co-op and nuke the ads, and I don't think I'm in the minority here. Keep trying to do the same thing expecting a different outcome, and you know the rest of the story. I applaud this step and hope they push their differentiation as a people-aligned source of Utah news even further. With how connected we are these days, what I'd really like to see is for them to make crowd-sourcing and discussion a systemic part of their processes and site/app. They can't be everywhere where news that's important to some is happening, but all of us together can.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
slwvx 5mo ago
> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? The Salt Lake Tribune (as in the article above) CAN afford salaries. > If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do? People ARE paying. I'm a subscriber to the Tribune and a donor.
analog8374 5mo ago
Make all the surveillance cameras and satellites public access. A culture of analysis and commenting will develop. We'd check the cultural effluent against the original stuff to keep it honest.
jart 5mo ago
They're funded by patronage. It's the most ancient economical model.

mcmcmc 5mo ago

If people don’t want to pay, then they don’t actually value the news. I pay for publications that I trust and want to continue reading. The key is finding a niche where the news organization can produce quality reporting that people actually value. “Free News” is just another ad business.

troupo 5mo ago
Significantly fewer people would pay for objective reporting than for, say, Fox News. Partly because Fox News would be much cheaper.
kanelincoln 5mo ago
Do you think that the desire to pay for a thing is the only indicator of whether that thing is valued? If not, what do you mean by "[people] don't actually value the news"?
- carlosjobim 5mo ago
  It's a great indicator.
- mcmcmc 5mo ago
  I think it’s an indicator of demand which shows comparative value in the context of household spending. If you have enough money to cover your basic needs and then some, but you choose to put that extra money towards something else, that reveals a preference for that thing over other products/services you could choose to purchase. If you only want something when you don’t have to pay for it and would never actually buy it even if you had the budget, then yeah I would contend you don’t actually want it. You’re just taking it because it’s there, and you can. “Free” services are fundamentally anticompetitive markets, which can work if it’s a non-profit or government service. When it’s a for-profit business you get perverse incentives and network effects concentrating wealth and power in smaller and smaller pockets, extracting it from users instead of an exchange of no value with customers. For-profit free news is the problem.

idle_zealot 5mo ago

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests? Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.

afavour 5mo ago
I see that as more of an ecosystem problem. In a world where multiple news organizations have cracked the nut of providing free news you rely on different outlets providing different perspectives. I'm not sure it's possible to make a news organization have absolutely no bias at all.
- idle_zealot 5mo ago
  I'm not convinced it's even conceivable in the abstract to have a news organization with "no bias." You have to make editorial decisions based on something. If you make then based on what you think your readers ought to know, your ideology, values, and understanding of the world inform those decisions and comprise your bias. An objective news outlet would be... what? A live feed of every square inch of the planet provided with no commentary? What we should demand is not unbiased reporting, but transparency in editorial decision making and proactive disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.
autoexec 5mo ago
I think it'd be a good start to have stories selected and reviewed by a diverse team of editors and fact checkers to make sure that the reporting is factual and that it isn't presented from a limited and biased perspective. You'd also have to be willing/able to burn bridges and risk losing advertisers, donors, viewers/readers, and supporters by reporting on things that offend those same people. That alone would be a huge improvement to most news sources I see today which outright lie and/or are biased in which stories they report on and how they report on them.

conception 5mo ago

It’s unfortunate we haven’t solved the micro-payment problem. Crypto was an obvious solution but anything would require a hefty network effect. But imagine like a starbucks card or whatever you have your micropayment card, and it auto reloads when it hits zero with 20 bucks or whatever. When you visit the times, a modal pops up, “This article costs $0.02. Read it? y/n or $1 for a day pass”. Sure pirates will get around it but they already do. Just make it grandma easy and you’re done. It’s just the money probably isn’t good enough for VC dollars to roll something out with enough big players to jump in.

afavour 5mo ago
That model doesn't really work, unfortunately: https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-a-theoretically/ https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-... It has been tried a bunch of times. I think a core problem is unlike most micro transaction opportunities you're asking customers to pay money to be told bad news. To buy something that will make them miserable. There's a fundamental disconnect there that means people aren't going to be inclined to do it.
- Cider9986 5mo ago
  The conclusion of that article is that the model doesn't work because of processing fees and friction from entering information. The author discounts Bitcoin because it has high fees, but some cryptos have 0 fees and others have very low fees. With crypto you also don't need to enter any information, simply scan the QR code and enter the amount you'd like to pay. If crypto was adopted, the model would work just fine. Personally, I always donate 10 cents to a dollar in Monero when I read an article[1] that I enjoyed that offers crypto donation addresses. Primal[2] has built a crypto wallet into their app and you can see people send "zaps" of Bitcoin when they appreciate a post and it has adoption. [1] https://www.therage.co/letter-1-keonne-rodriguez/ https://www.therage.co/letter-1-keonne-rodriguez/ https://www.therage.co/donate/ https://www.therage.co/donate/ https://zola.ink https://zola.ink [2] https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/pop-ch01#:~:text=2%2C184 https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/pop-ch01#:~:text=2%2C184

andriy_koval 5mo ago

> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? you provide free service, build brand and ecosystem, and charge for extra services, e.g. automatic-monitoring specific news topic, analytics, faster delivery on scale, etc. and even ads/ads free accounts

romanows 5mo ago

NPR/public radio has been doing a decent job without much obtrusive third-party advertising.

raincole 5mo ago

Political parties and foreign actors, eventually. Propaganda pieces are usually free to access.

swader999 5mo ago

Maybe that is part of the plan, eliminate truth so that everyone just gives up. Perhaps crowd sourced facts/news with legit upvoting, weighted upvoting based on historic 'credibility'. Top contributions get a share of add revenue.

kg 5mo ago
Doesn't crowd sourcing and upvotes and revenue for high ranking just mean people will generate what's popular to get paid for it? Will there be money for unpopular truths somehow?
- swader999 5mo ago
  Yes and that affects all existing 'news' channels too. It comes down to general education levels and that has similar bad incentives in play.

carlosjobim 5mo ago

Mass syndication has worked splendidly for all other media. But textual media publishers still refuse. They have to learn from Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, and such and start offering bulk subscriptions for a fair price. It's better for the individual news providers to earn 10 cents each from 10 million subscribers, than to earn 10 dollars each from 10 000 subscribers.

oersted 5mo ago

There's an obvious answer: a good public news service. I know, I know, that one is problematic too. Some countries have pulled it off relatively successfully, but it's never perfect. The thing is, this is exactly what the government is for: services that individuals don't want to pay for, but are important to have as a society. This is possible if there's a real division of powers in the government. Yes, that sounds increasingly unlikely now, but it's no fantasy, it has been achieved in many different places and moments in history, to a reasonable degree. I mean, there's a reason why journalism is called "the fourth estate", maybe it should literally be the fourth independent government branch alongside the executive, legislative and judicial. We are in the "information age" after all. Or at least a relatively independent and technocratic government agency with decent funding. And don't tell me that "we have it but nobody watches it", then it's just not properly funded or supported. The BBC is extremely competitive alongside commercial news media, both in the UK and internationally. Many countries have similarly strong public media even if it is not internationally as well known, because of the language barrier.

tr_user 5mo ago
NPR got defunded and here in australia, the ABC are run by political appointees while the rest of the corpo media start branding it as leftist talking points. You can't fix this if the funding source isn't independent and it's competing against a lot more money
- socalgal2 5mo ago
  It’s hilarious that you think the issue was funding and not the fact that NPR was and is a voice for the left and the opposition thought it was unfair for the government to be paying for one side’s propaganda. If you can’t hear it you aren’t listening

vslira 5mo ago

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts: Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in. Maybe a liberal, democratic state could successfully build something similar for news organizations: all citizens have to pay a "journalism tax", which they then channel to a subscription for a vehicle they trust. Yes, a million ways this can be abused, the government may censor opposition, etc. I know, I said the idea wasn't great. But worth pondering. Also, this is based on a very stylized understanding of how said German tax works (I'm not German and never looked at it that deeply) btw I understand this is the opposite of "free", but more about journalism financing in general.

vablings 5mo ago
The issue is that this is on a balance sheet of a budget somewhere and an autocrat will selectively choose to cut with a knife such they speak ill of them. See the current debate with the FCC in the USA. I am sure there is some kind of financial instrument that could be structured in a way to pay down a news org with public money that cannot just be slashed at whim and will.
- ambicapter 5mo ago
  So, you don't think any government program at all will work in this case?
bjelkeman-again 5mo ago
Several European countries have something like it. I can only find a very brief article in English on Wikipedia and a longer one in Swedish. But it seems to be reasonably successful in my experience. The Swedish article mentions: Sweden, other Nordic countries, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d
5mo ago

mmooss 5mo ago

> If the people arent interested in paying They are, according to the OP: https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-paywall-removal-details/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-payw...

boplicity 5mo ago

Don't try to be "objective" or "impartial." That's an impossible task, and anyone claiming to do so is being dishonest. Instead, own your biases. Make them explicit and public. That way people can understand were you're coming from, and take that into account. There will always be bias in any reporting. It's better to make it visible than to pretend it doesn't exist. This means having a clear perspective and "owning" that perspective, instead of shying away from it. Coincidentally, this type of thinking can dramatically increase brand loyalty and trust.

aidenn0 5mo ago
Anyone claiming that they are trying to be impartial is being dishonest?
- boplicity 5mo ago
  You can't be impartial; everyone has their own sets of biases that they can't get around. These are sometimes obvious, sometimes not, but they're always there. It's not necessarily intentionally dishonest to say you're impartial, but it fundamentally is dishonest to claim you're capable of the impossible.
  - aidenn0 5mo ago
    You seem to be conflating "try" with "being" (and possibly also "a little biased" with "a lot biased"). If I currently have a 12 minute mile and I try to get it down to 6 minutes, but only mange to get it down to 8 minutes I have both: 1. Not lied about my goal 2. Accomplished something similar to my goal.
frumplestlatz 5mo ago
Anyone arguing for “owning your bias” is trying to justify using media to influence instead of inform. We can never be perfectly unbiased, but we can certainly try. We dedicated entire higher education programs to the process of doing exactly that — it was called journalism.

EGreg 5mo ago

Wait, I never understood why we need "intrepid reporters" hired by a certain company to enter a war zone, for instance. Everyone has cameras now. They're ubiquitous. What we really need is collaboration online to make sense of the footage being uploaded. And the same for any kind of news. Why do we need the capitalist model again? Look at Wikipedia, Linux, open source software, and more.

mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago
Exactly. News is by definition storytelling, and I don't think it's healthy to conflate the two or to pretend that storytellers are reporting on facts.
HWR_14 5mo ago
A intrepid reporter with a reputation is less likely to upload doctored footage for propaganda purposes.

insane_dreamer 5mo ago

Publicly funded, like the BBC "tax" in the UK which they used to have (not sure if they still do?) Or PBS/NPR in the US, funded by taxpayers. Worked reasonably well, and fairly independently, for decades until Trump defunded it.

nemoniac 5mo ago

Isn't it equally important to ask the question:how exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you can afford the salaries?

observationist 5mo ago

The problem has been differing narratives from different sources with different biases, motives, and objectives. The solution is a thorough interrogation of different sources, cross-checking and validating novel claims, using a Bayesian approach to maintaining a model of the world. Not rigid, but roughly scientific. Most people can't afford to do that, so they pick a proxy from among the many individuals that do the work of sorting and filtering and comparing and validating news from a wide spectrum. Some proxies are decent, some are not, and come with their own biases and skew. The solution is high intelligence local AI that maintains a world model for you, providing you with updates based on your interests and cross-validated world events, with a rigorous record of sources and reliability. Anything short of that is just repackaged proxy games. On the plus side, Asmongold or Hasan Piker are the low bar to beat. Haha. People are so well informed and educated now that they have access to the interwebs.

nurple 5mo ago

Easy. One of the primary reason that I don't subscribe to any kind of news anymore is exactly because of all the advertising and the being owned by giant money and power concerns. I would happily subscribe at a quite a bit higher rate for news orgs that go non-profit/co-op and nuke the ads, and I don't think I'm in the minority here. Keep trying to do the same thing expecting a different outcome, and you know the rest of the story. I applaud this step and hope they push their differentiation as a people-aligned source of Utah news even further. With how connected we are these days, what I'd really like to see is for them to make crowd-sourcing and discussion a systemic part of their processes and site/app. They can't be everywhere where news that's important to some is happening, but all of us together can.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

slwvx 5mo ago

> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? The Salt Lake Tribune (as in the article above) CAN afford salaries. > If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do? People ARE paying. I'm a subscriber to the Tribune and a donor.

analog8374 5mo ago

Make all the surveillance cameras and satellites public access. A culture of analysis and commenting will develop. We'd check the cultural effluent against the original stuff to keep it honest.

jart 5mo ago

They're funded by patronage. It's the most ancient economical model.