I sense that, for a long time, the world of journalism has told itself that it is a fundamental pillar of democratic society. While true, the implication is tha

I sense that, for a long time, the world of journalism has told itself that it is a fundamental pillar of democratic society. While true, the implication is that society owes it something. You might even extrapolate that a journalist doing an investigation that did not result in a published story, has still added value because they have kept the authorities in check. However, the funding for this type of work only really existed as a quirk of the technology that newspapers used and now that the public has the opportunity to only pay for the stories they're interested in; I think society will need more constitutional rights regarding access to government data and a crowd-sourced monitoring effort to prevent corruption. I, like you, don't feel a moral imperative to pay someone for putting in a days work regardless of what they produce at the end of it. I would donate to political campaigns regarding constitutional rights to open data though.