5 ms·

Unfortunately I don't know of any profitable way to provide local news without having it subsidized by classifieds, car ads, real estate ads, etc. Newspapers us

by lacker 18y ago

Unfortunately I don't know of any profitable way to provide local news without having it subsidized by classifieds, car ads, real estate ads, etc. Newspapers used to be profitable because they dominated all these things. But on the web, they become detached. Ebay and craigslist can efficiently serve many places and scale up effectively. But it's hard to watch the police in 100 major cities at once. How much money would people pay to provide the service of watching the police? I'm afraid the answer is... not much. It has to be tied to something else, or to have a nonprofit structure.

randallsquared 18y ago
I would expect that many cities could support a dozen independent crime/police bloggers, either via ads or direct donations. Smaller municipalities probably wouldn't be able to support any full-timers, but they may only need part-time watching, anyway.
alecco 18y ago
The structure for controls is there. It just needs a fix. Write your representatives. Journalism backed by advertisement pushing consumerism isn't a valid democratic institution, IMHO. It doesn't represent anything. As a control system it is a travesty, you don't vote them and you have to pay for access. And then it forces candidates to be press-visible with the same marketing machine, with the same backers. Full government transparency is required, not just rhetoric. The technology is available already.
0xdefec8 18y ago
It depresses me sometimes how almost everything in society can be be reduced to the question "but how will this generate money"? On the other hand, maybe the sooner people are honest with reality and start asking that question first, the sooner we'd get solutions to problems like this one. At least that seems to be the libertarian take on things. It just concerns me that the end result of the invisible hand given absolute power is something out of a William Gibson nightmare.
- lacker 18y ago
  The reason we got all this great investigative reporting in the first place was because newspapers were making money. Journalism needs to have its own source of power besides the government. You can't simultaneously depend on the government for funding and make it your mission to expose the government's shortfalls. Profit provides that power.
  - 0xdefec8 18y ago
    True, but is it better for a paper to be afraid of its sponsors and popular opinion than to be afraid of the government? The need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to maximize profit is what's brought us such gems like USAToday and 99% of the garbage on television. On the other hand, some of the only watchable programming IMO is on PBS, and we know where that money comes from. I don't have the answer; papers funded by the government would be a disaster like you said. But I don't think profit is the panacea to the world's problems.
  - drinian 18y ago
    Yes and no; the BBC is perceived as independent even while publicly funded; so are NPR and PBS, to a much lesser extent.
    - anamax 18y ago
      Their "independence" doesn't mean that they'll investigate anything/everything. For example, while all of them are willing to quibble about specific aspects of specific govt programs, they're unwilling to go after govt programs in the large (with the small exception of military projects).
- lallysingh 18y ago
  The money question is critical. It's how we get food/shelter/consumer electronics to those people who do this task? Money's just* liquefied labor, after all. * Yes, I'm really, really simplifying here.
- Eliezer 18y ago
olefoo 18y ago
A friend and I had a long discussion about possible models for local investigative journalism online. The best we could come up with was something along the lines of a modified subscription plan with a low yearly rate (n < $40 usd) funding automated collections of government data with a very small cadre of reporters writing stories and editing each other. Either that or beg-a-thons like public radio.
biohacker42 18y ago
Make the paper a weekly or a monthly. Eliminate fluff, abandon breaking news and provide deep insight. That's the same model used by magazines like the economist and the atlantic, and I think they're doing well. This would not be the end of the tabloid, the are so cheap to produce they can go on forever. It would not be the end of local news, it would not even be the end of local daily or breaking news. It would just be the end of of printed daily local news.

by lacker 18y ago

randallsquared 18y ago

I would expect that many cities could support a dozen independent crime/police bloggers, either via ads or direct donations. Smaller municipalities probably wouldn't be able to support any full-timers, but they may only need part-time watching, anyway.

alecco 18y ago

The structure for controls is there. It just needs a fix. Write your representatives. Journalism backed by advertisement pushing consumerism isn't a valid democratic institution, IMHO. It doesn't represent anything. As a control system it is a travesty, you don't vote them and you have to pay for access. And then it forces candidates to be press-visible with the same marketing machine, with the same backers. Full government transparency is required, not just rhetoric. The technology is available already.

0xdefec8 18y ago

It depresses me sometimes how almost everything in society can be be reduced to the question "but how will this generate money"? On the other hand, maybe the sooner people are honest with reality and start asking that question first, the sooner we'd get solutions to problems like this one. At least that seems to be the libertarian take on things. It just concerns me that the end result of the invisible hand given absolute power is something out of a William Gibson nightmare.

lacker 18y ago
The reason we got all this great investigative reporting in the first place was because newspapers were making money. Journalism needs to have its own source of power besides the government. You can't simultaneously depend on the government for funding and make it your mission to expose the government's shortfalls. Profit provides that power.
- 0xdefec8 18y ago
  True, but is it better for a paper to be afraid of its sponsors and popular opinion than to be afraid of the government? The need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to maximize profit is what's brought us such gems like USAToday and 99% of the garbage on television. On the other hand, some of the only watchable programming IMO is on PBS, and we know where that money comes from. I don't have the answer; papers funded by the government would be a disaster like you said. But I don't think profit is the panacea to the world's problems.
- drinian 18y ago
  Yes and no; the BBC is perceived as independent even while publicly funded; so are NPR and PBS, to a much lesser extent.
  - anamax 18y ago
    Their "independence" doesn't mean that they'll investigate anything/everything. For example, while all of them are willing to quibble about specific aspects of specific govt programs, they're unwilling to go after govt programs in the large (with the small exception of military projects).
lallysingh 18y ago
The money question is critical. It's how we get food/shelter/consumer electronics to those people who do this task? Money's just* liquefied labor, after all. * Yes, I'm really, really simplifying here.
Eliezer 18y ago

olefoo 18y ago

A friend and I had a long discussion about possible models for local investigative journalism online. The best we could come up with was something along the lines of a modified subscription plan with a low yearly rate (n < $40 usd) funding automated collections of government data with a very small cadre of reporters writing stories and editing each other. Either that or beg-a-thons like public radio.

biohacker42 18y ago

Make the paper a weekly or a monthly. Eliminate fluff, abandon breaking news and provide deep insight. That's the same model used by magazines like the economist and the atlantic, and I think they're doing well. This would not be the end of the tabloid, the are so cheap to produce they can go on forever. It would not be the end of local news, it would not even be the end of local daily or breaking news. It would just be the end of of printed daily local news.