Why do we need a funding model for arts or news publication? For example, most of the artistic content I consume (aside from cinema) originates from people who self-publish online (blogs, articles, podcasts) and
do not involve advertising nor ask for donations in the delivery of the content.
Those people like creating and delivering content to others for free. They are happy to lose their own money in exchange for the product they like (an audience consuming their content). Just like I am happy to lose money to reserve a spot in my recreational basketball league. I don’t also let tennis shoe brands bid on the logo of the t-shirt I’ll wear.
I think the problem is that we have this idea that someone should be paid for content. But I don’t agree.
If they want to be paid for it, that’s totally fine too and they can charge a paywall, ask for donations, or attach ads, etc. However, plenty of other people write better stories, give away better paintings, generate better games or videos, share better poems or summaries of world news or published research or opinion articles — all without expecting any type of payment or earnings to come from their efforts or costs to make and distribute it.
The lone aspect of this I think might not be fully sustained just as people’s voluntary recreational pursuits is the upfront capital required to fund some types of investigative journalism and provide legal protection to journalists. That part makes sense to me as a subscription cost for consuming from centralized news organizations, and if those orgs run out of money, it’s a reflection that society doesn’t value the journalism compared with recreational journalists happy to generate the content without compensation.
I personally want to pay so that journalism can be thoroughly investigative and not captured by bad state actors or bad corporate actors. But that’s just my opinion... one that most humans in my country don’t seem to share, resulting in market conditions where for-pay journalism can only be sustained by a very small number of groups.