You said it before I could comment but the only viable answer at scale would be public funding of journalism. $50B is a small number for the federal government (and it’d be even smaller if states and municipalities took responsibility for contributing to journalism at varying scales).
Well into the 20th century, a lot of small town newspapers survived because local government was required to post public notices of auctions, proposed actions, settlements, judgements and what not in a newspaper. It wasn't a ton of money, but it paid enough to keep a minimal local paper in business. The funders were generally states, cities, towns and counties. The US government had its own Superintendent of Documents, and it is possible that some states did their own printing as well.
By the late 20th century, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post had evolved into national papers. You could get daily delivery in many cities and, even now, they provide world and national news to a lot of papers much like the Associated Press. (The AP was an artifact of the telegraph and railroad era.) If anything, their reach risen with the rise of the internet. The internet has been less kind to local news coverage.
There is a precedent for the government funding local news. Local governments now publish their official public notices online, but these are often disjointed and lack context. I know there is the issue of keeping the press independent, especially as the nation is as partisan now as in the early 19th century. Still, there might be some mechanism.
Public funding or a breakup of the advertising monopolies that allowed more of that money to go to content creators rather than middlemen would be very positive steps and we should push hard in that direction politically.
Failing those sorts of top-down political fixes, I think the bottom up subscription based model is the way to go. Every substack is like a tiny newspaper. Some of them are already growing to multiple authors and might become full on media organizations, most will stay as a hobby or for the lucky few be enough to support just the main writer. You are obviously already doing your part on that, and also presumably familiar with the huge difficulties of that path. But as you say, what else is there?
The commie in me wonders if newsrooms *need* that $50B in revenue from another source, or if a much smaller amount would suffice? Maybe the subscription model isn’t enough to line shareholders’ pockets, but could it be sufficient (paired with some public funding?) to give journalists and operators fair wages and keep a newsroom doing its job in the community?
I had to stop reading halfway through the first paragraph. Too much reality this early on a Friday morning. I’ll come back and finish it later. All I can say is Jeebus. The first rule of economics should be if you measure the wrong things you make bad decisions. Maximizing greed will never make us whole.
This is not journalism and has nothing to do with a model that will build good journalism.
There are some great nonprofit outlets opening which is good to see. Nonprofit model will not be enough. We do need public funding and there are lots of models for it. People do have good reasons to be skeptical of centrally-driven ones (though the BBC is a whole lot better than most US corporate press) but there are lots of public funding methods that avoid the 'pravda' problem.
How did google capture all the advertising revenue? And is there an option to just, I dunno, legislate it so that ad revenues go towards journalist? I'm not contesting the facs, I'd just like to know more about how we got to this spot and if there is a way to fight the root of the problem rather than just find new funding when there is already plenty of ad revenue that just goes to rent seeking middle men.
If you've already written about this or know where another good article can be found, I'd really appreciate a link.
Isn't this hedge fund rag going to run afoul of regulatory agencies like the SEC? They are influencing the stock market for gain by publishing stories about companies they invest in.
Following media in Atlanta I'm skeptical of an ambitious public funding model.
Both our public broadcasters have become extensions of the legacy, Billionaire-owned newspaper. No major newsroom is unionized to push back against management/owners or even report out conflicts of interest.
The prevailing attitude is that journalism should celebrate and promote more than interrogate and reform. To be marketing for the city or state.
More money without a greater culture of independence will only exacerbate a sense that journalists work for the existing power structure and not the public at large.
1) Niche sites like theautopian.com and defector.com seem to work well using subscriptions, to the point where more established sites pick up on their stories.
2) One issue with public funded journalism is the attached conditions. In New Zealand, a Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was made available by the government in 2020 to, in theory, support news media through the COVID-19-induced downturn. However, to receive funding, organisations had to sign up to specific conditions, including supporting of a particular view of the Treaty of Waitangi. As you could imagine, this quickly lead to a widely held view that the media was being bought. https://commonroomnz.com/graham-adams-has-government-money-corrupted-journalism/
If we hadn't been so quick to flush all the crypto guys down the toilet, right now I could be reading a deeply reported piece on gerrymandering from the Bored Ape News Network.
Instead of ad sales, every newsroom needs a team of mediocre game developers to create gacha games.
It feels like state-funded media is not the answer. I don't know what is, but a $50 billion government program to fund journalism – even with the appropriate checks and balances and nods to independence – will inevitably be perceived as Pravda come to America. The implementation of something like this feels like it would be a total disaster. How do you make sure that the money doesn't end up going to people who traffic in misinformation? If it does, how do you stop those people without inevitable scandals about infringement on free speech and freedom of the press? How do you make sure that it's truly independent of government influence?
The PBS model is well and good, but PBS gets less than $500 million in annual funding and still needs to beg for donations, plus you know not a single Republican will vote for a multi-billion-dollar funding bill for local newspapers – and even if you did get it passed, its funding would be a perennial target for the right. And because of its size, Democrats would inevitably cave on cutting its funding as part of a compromise on some bill or another. There's no way the funding will actually increase over time because the machinations of our government will make sure that doesn't happen.
I'm not saying that I have the answers – I wish I did – but in a capitalist system like ours, it sadly feels like the only hope is to develop an entirely new business model that finds innovative ways to monetize news content. The only other realistic option at the moment is dependence on the largesse of billionaires, which is essentially the hedge fund business model but with a slightly different flavor of conflict of interest.
You said it before I could comment but the only viable answer at scale would be public funding of journalism. $50B is a small number for the federal government (and it’d be even smaller if states and municipalities took responsibility for contributing to journalism at varying scales).
Well into the 20th century, a lot of small town newspapers survived because local government was required to post public notices of auctions, proposed actions, settlements, judgements and what not in a newspaper. It wasn't a ton of money, but it paid enough to keep a minimal local paper in business. The funders were generally states, cities, towns and counties. The US government had its own Superintendent of Documents, and it is possible that some states did their own printing as well.
By the late 20th century, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post had evolved into national papers. You could get daily delivery in many cities and, even now, they provide world and national news to a lot of papers much like the Associated Press. (The AP was an artifact of the telegraph and railroad era.) If anything, their reach risen with the rise of the internet. The internet has been less kind to local news coverage.
There is a precedent for the government funding local news. Local governments now publish their official public notices online, but these are often disjointed and lack context. I know there is the issue of keeping the press independent, especially as the nation is as partisan now as in the early 19th century. Still, there might be some mechanism.
Public funding or a breakup of the advertising monopolies that allowed more of that money to go to content creators rather than middlemen would be very positive steps and we should push hard in that direction politically.
Failing those sorts of top-down political fixes, I think the bottom up subscription based model is the way to go. Every substack is like a tiny newspaper. Some of them are already growing to multiple authors and might become full on media organizations, most will stay as a hobby or for the lucky few be enough to support just the main writer. You are obviously already doing your part on that, and also presumably familiar with the huge difficulties of that path. But as you say, what else is there?
The commie in me wonders if newsrooms *need* that $50B in revenue from another source, or if a much smaller amount would suffice? Maybe the subscription model isn’t enough to line shareholders’ pockets, but could it be sufficient (paired with some public funding?) to give journalists and operators fair wages and keep a newsroom doing its job in the community?
I had to stop reading halfway through the first paragraph. Too much reality this early on a Friday morning. I’ll come back and finish it later. All I can say is Jeebus. The first rule of economics should be if you measure the wrong things you make bad decisions. Maximizing greed will never make us whole.
This is not journalism and has nothing to do with a model that will build good journalism.
There are some great nonprofit outlets opening which is good to see. Nonprofit model will not be enough. We do need public funding and there are lots of models for it. People do have good reasons to be skeptical of centrally-driven ones (though the BBC is a whole lot better than most US corporate press) but there are lots of public funding methods that avoid the 'pravda' problem.
Here is a good one: https://www.washingtoninformer.com/dc-local-journalism-funding-act/
Come to Portland, Oregon, home of the renowned Powell's Books, and one of the most literate towns around!
How did google capture all the advertising revenue? And is there an option to just, I dunno, legislate it so that ad revenues go towards journalist? I'm not contesting the facs, I'd just like to know more about how we got to this spot and if there is a way to fight the root of the problem rather than just find new funding when there is already plenty of ad revenue that just goes to rent seeking middle men.
If you've already written about this or know where another good article can be found, I'd really appreciate a link.
Isn't this hedge fund rag going to run afoul of regulatory agencies like the SEC? They are influencing the stock market for gain by publishing stories about companies they invest in.
Following media in Atlanta I'm skeptical of an ambitious public funding model.
Both our public broadcasters have become extensions of the legacy, Billionaire-owned newspaper. No major newsroom is unionized to push back against management/owners or even report out conflicts of interest.
The prevailing attitude is that journalism should celebrate and promote more than interrogate and reform. To be marketing for the city or state.
More money without a greater culture of independence will only exacerbate a sense that journalists work for the existing power structure and not the public at large.
https://brianpbannon.medium.com/404-media-7d9f56bc8736
1) Niche sites like theautopian.com and defector.com seem to work well using subscriptions, to the point where more established sites pick up on their stories.
2) One issue with public funded journalism is the attached conditions. In New Zealand, a Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was made available by the government in 2020 to, in theory, support news media through the COVID-19-induced downturn. However, to receive funding, organisations had to sign up to specific conditions, including supporting of a particular view of the Treaty of Waitangi. As you could imagine, this quickly lead to a widely held view that the media was being bought. https://commonroomnz.com/graham-adams-has-government-money-corrupted-journalism/
If we hadn't been so quick to flush all the crypto guys down the toilet, right now I could be reading a deeply reported piece on gerrymandering from the Bored Ape News Network.
Instead of ad sales, every newsroom needs a team of mediocre game developers to create gacha games.
It feels like state-funded media is not the answer. I don't know what is, but a $50 billion government program to fund journalism – even with the appropriate checks and balances and nods to independence – will inevitably be perceived as Pravda come to America. The implementation of something like this feels like it would be a total disaster. How do you make sure that the money doesn't end up going to people who traffic in misinformation? If it does, how do you stop those people without inevitable scandals about infringement on free speech and freedom of the press? How do you make sure that it's truly independent of government influence?
The PBS model is well and good, but PBS gets less than $500 million in annual funding and still needs to beg for donations, plus you know not a single Republican will vote for a multi-billion-dollar funding bill for local newspapers – and even if you did get it passed, its funding would be a perennial target for the right. And because of its size, Democrats would inevitably cave on cutting its funding as part of a compromise on some bill or another. There's no way the funding will actually increase over time because the machinations of our government will make sure that doesn't happen.
I'm not saying that I have the answers – I wish I did – but in a capitalist system like ours, it sadly feels like the only hope is to develop an entirely new business model that finds innovative ways to monetize news content. The only other realistic option at the moment is dependence on the largesse of billionaires, which is essentially the hedge fund business model but with a slightly different flavor of conflict of interest.
Snag
It's called Getty images cause you Getty the images
The old saw about bringing a knife to a gun fight comes to mind. If that knife's all you got at hand, might as well use it.