The traditional way of financing print media was to have the advertisers pay for the paper, printing and administration, whereas the purchasing price went to pa

The traditional way of financing print media was to have the advertisers pay for the paper, printing and administration, whereas the purchasing price went to pay for the actual journalism, the researchers, writers, editors. That way, at least the good, investigative journalism was independent of the advertisers, and could even criticize them. The web made the paper/printing costs vanish, but also the purchasing price, so now the news-consuming public does not pay the journalists any more. Web advertising and ambitious news gathering (which is not afraid to investigate the behavior of the advertising companies if there's a good story to be found) are mutually exclusive. And it's a cheap shot to tell the journalists: "Go find yourself a better business nodel, you old-media turkeys hahaha." People who used to pay for content stop doing so, advertisers will not pay for content that they can't control and that might investigate their own companies, and we're loosing independent journalism that way. There's a bit too much joking about this for my liking.