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The real power move would be to start targeting prospective students. Universities will start caring of enrolment goes down.

mike_hearn 1mo ago
They might not care even then. Journalism is an interesting case study. Their revenues went into sharp decline around the start of the century, dropping by more than 50% in some cases. Concurrently polls showed trust in journalism was plummeting, that people were tuning out because they felt that what they read wasn't reliable. Journalism didn't solve this problem by rebuilding trust and their audience. Instead they started reforming as non-profit institutions and taking huge payments from philanthropists to push specific agendas, without alerting readers to that fact. https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-entertainment-journalism-united-states-087d1d5dd7189c529fe5d7a21a1ffb5f https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta... These grants aren't tied to readership but rather to the content of what's published, so they can produce lots of articles even if nobody reads them. Those articles are then used as "reliable sources" to control Wikipedia, and from there what search engines and LLMs say. If students start checking out at scale (already happening), or if governments cut funding (already happening in the USA), their most likely move is to just replace the revenue with money from the Gates Foundation et al, and keep going just as they are. Their primary role will switch from education or research to the propagation of approved narratives.
- SmirkingRevenge 1mo ago
  News reporting and journalism has always mostly been a for-profit enterprise. And no matter what business model one might choose (ads, subs, charity, etc) there will be perverse incentives working in conflict with pure truth seeking and newsworthiness. Audience capture, pleasing advertisers, the politics/interests of the owners, etc. I'm sure non-profit sponsorship has it's own issues, but I don't think those issues are particularly new or unique or transformative. The demand side is arguably the more intractable issue with journalism, since loads of people don't select for truth or importance in their news - or at least not very carefully. The institutions that seem to hold up the best are the ones with the broadest audiences. On the issue of public trust in journalism, I don't think it's actually a function of the quality or trustworthiness of journalism. I think it has more to do with the rise of radical right-wing propaganda infotainment, a core pillar of which was (and is) delegitimizing mainstream media (and academic) institutions. The mistrust was created and cultivated. Consequently, there's not much they can do to regain trust, except to work harder at discrediting the radical right-wing propaganda that has been flooding all the zones for the past several decades.
  - mike_hearn 1mo ago
    I think ads were better because everyone was aware of the conflict of interest issues and took steps to manage it. They admitted it could be an issue and would have internal firewalls where ad sales weren't allowed to talk to the journalists, things like that. Advertisers accepted it because their goal wasn't to manipulate news reporting. The problem with the "philanthropic" funding is not only is there no firewall, but it's explicitly pay-to-play agenda pushing. So that culture of keeping revenue and news separated has vanished without the public being made aware of it. The right wing are saying things like, journalism is fake because they're just pushing a left wing agenda for money. That's the claim that delegitimizes journalism. But it turns out that the rightists are correct and that's exactly what journalists are doing, so it's hardly their fault that mistrust was created and cultivated. You should mistrust people who mislead you about their agenda, and if you go to the AP website today and look at some random article paid for by these grants there's no mention of where the funding comes from. Actually you get a popup begging for donations, saying that because the AP is a non-profit it's extra trustworthy. If they want to regain trust, a good start would be by refusing to accept money for stories, relabelling all the stories where they did that, and then pay for journalism purely out of subscription revenues or ads brokered through exchanges (i.e. where the advertiser doesn't have any contact with the publishers).
    - LorenPechtel 1mo ago
      There certainly are problems, but the biggest is that reality puts two other factors ahead of publishing the truth: 1) People don't like having their beliefs challenged. This will slant all news organizations towards the biases of their readers. We see this at all levels. The shorter and more personalized the feedback loop the faster it happens. This makes the news with things like ChatGPT, the feedback is very quick and personalized so it's very easy for people to tumble down the rabbit hole. Same thing, slower, with social media recommendation engines. And online hate communities--they lead people to extremes. But it also happens with traditional media, just much more diffuse. Everybody moves away from the center. 2) News organizations care very much about being able to get images and video of events. This means they are readily manipulated by restricting access to those who report the locally-approved version of the "facts". We used to understand that "news" from Russia was the state-sponsored version, we don't pay attention to the fact that "news" from areas with Islamist control are just about as bad. And news is always slanted towards the side of controversy. No controversy, people aren't going to care. However, this does not remotely mean that the right wing news is better. The reality is that it's even worse. All the same forces are at work and then there's an ideological bias on top of that. With news having become a la carte I doubt there's any way to remain in business as an honest news source anymore.
- amanaplanacanal 1mo ago
  You left out a pretty important force: political forces lying about the trustworthiness of journalism in a blatant effort to gain political power. Traditional journalism didn't have any ready defenses against that.

mike_hearn 1mo ago

They might not care even then. Journalism is an interesting case study. Their revenues went into sharp decline around the start of the century, dropping by more than 50% in some cases. Concurrently polls showed trust in journalism was plummeting, that people were tuning out because they felt that what they read wasn't reliable. Journalism didn't solve this problem by rebuilding trust and their audience. Instead they started reforming as non-profit institutions and taking huge payments from philanthropists to push specific agendas, without alerting readers to that fact. https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-entertainment-journalism-united-states-087d1d5dd7189c529fe5d7a21a1ffb5f https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta... These grants aren't tied to readership but rather to the content of what's published, so they can produce lots of articles even if nobody reads them. Those articles are then used as "reliable sources" to control Wikipedia, and from there what search engines and LLMs say. If students start checking out at scale (already happening), or if governments cut funding (already happening in the USA), their most likely move is to just replace the revenue with money from the Gates Foundation et al, and keep going just as they are. Their primary role will switch from education or research to the propagation of approved narratives.

SmirkingRevenge 1mo ago
News reporting and journalism has always mostly been a for-profit enterprise. And no matter what business model one might choose (ads, subs, charity, etc) there will be perverse incentives working in conflict with pure truth seeking and newsworthiness. Audience capture, pleasing advertisers, the politics/interests of the owners, etc. I'm sure non-profit sponsorship has it's own issues, but I don't think those issues are particularly new or unique or transformative. The demand side is arguably the more intractable issue with journalism, since loads of people don't select for truth or importance in their news - or at least not very carefully. The institutions that seem to hold up the best are the ones with the broadest audiences. On the issue of public trust in journalism, I don't think it's actually a function of the quality or trustworthiness of journalism. I think it has more to do with the rise of radical right-wing propaganda infotainment, a core pillar of which was (and is) delegitimizing mainstream media (and academic) institutions. The mistrust was created and cultivated. Consequently, there's not much they can do to regain trust, except to work harder at discrediting the radical right-wing propaganda that has been flooding all the zones for the past several decades.
- mike_hearn 1mo ago
  I think ads were better because everyone was aware of the conflict of interest issues and took steps to manage it. They admitted it could be an issue and would have internal firewalls where ad sales weren't allowed to talk to the journalists, things like that. Advertisers accepted it because their goal wasn't to manipulate news reporting. The problem with the "philanthropic" funding is not only is there no firewall, but it's explicitly pay-to-play agenda pushing. So that culture of keeping revenue and news separated has vanished without the public being made aware of it. The right wing are saying things like, journalism is fake because they're just pushing a left wing agenda for money. That's the claim that delegitimizes journalism. But it turns out that the rightists are correct and that's exactly what journalists are doing, so it's hardly their fault that mistrust was created and cultivated. You should mistrust people who mislead you about their agenda, and if you go to the AP website today and look at some random article paid for by these grants there's no mention of where the funding comes from. Actually you get a popup begging for donations, saying that because the AP is a non-profit it's extra trustworthy. If they want to regain trust, a good start would be by refusing to accept money for stories, relabelling all the stories where they did that, and then pay for journalism purely out of subscription revenues or ads brokered through exchanges (i.e. where the advertiser doesn't have any contact with the publishers).
  - LorenPechtel 1mo ago
    There certainly are problems, but the biggest is that reality puts two other factors ahead of publishing the truth: 1) People don't like having their beliefs challenged. This will slant all news organizations towards the biases of their readers. We see this at all levels. The shorter and more personalized the feedback loop the faster it happens. This makes the news with things like ChatGPT, the feedback is very quick and personalized so it's very easy for people to tumble down the rabbit hole. Same thing, slower, with social media recommendation engines. And online hate communities--they lead people to extremes. But it also happens with traditional media, just much more diffuse. Everybody moves away from the center. 2) News organizations care very much about being able to get images and video of events. This means they are readily manipulated by restricting access to those who report the locally-approved version of the "facts". We used to understand that "news" from Russia was the state-sponsored version, we don't pay attention to the fact that "news" from areas with Islamist control are just about as bad. And news is always slanted towards the side of controversy. No controversy, people aren't going to care. However, this does not remotely mean that the right wing news is better. The reality is that it's even worse. All the same forces are at work and then there's an ideological bias on top of that. With news having become a la carte I doubt there's any way to remain in business as an honest news source anymore.
amanaplanacanal 1mo ago
You left out a pretty important force: political forces lying about the trustworthiness of journalism in a blatant effort to gain political power. Traditional journalism didn't have any ready defenses against that.