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Making the news available at no cost is a victory

sltrib.com

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Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#11

Post by adolph »

This appears to be "free as in beer" in that they do not mention any changes to intellectual property considerations.

  In 2019, The Tribune became the first legacy publication to transition to a 
  nonprofit. This move changed our calculus. We are now an independent news 
  organization, not owned by any person or company.
The change to corporate structure is probably more significant than removing pay to read. If they can attract a big and broad enough donor base of civic associations etc then they will be well insulated from the vicissitudes of quasi-ad "underwriting."

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#12

Post by flexagoon »

kgwxd wrote: post #7
cathyreisenwitz wrote: post #3

Making newsrooms beholden to donors is not ideal, but it's better than being beholden to advertisers.

"beholden to donors" is a nonsensical phrase, unless "donors" is defined with a wink, a nod, and air-quotes.

I think I have a pretty good guess of who the donors are for a newspaper in Salt Lake City

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#13

Post by fragmede »

cathyreisenwitz wrote: post #3

Making newsrooms beholden to donors is not ideal, but it's better than being beholden to advertisers.

Why is being beholden to advertisers who just want to make a buck better than donors with specific political goals to change and shape society how they want it to look. (Eg anti-abortion movements.)

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#14

Post by kanelincoln »

mcmcmc wrote: post #4
superxpro12 wrote: post #2

The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?

If people don’t want to pay, then they don’t actually value the news. I pay for publications that I trust and want to continue reading. The key is finding a niche where the news organization can produce quality reporting that people actually value. “Free News” is just another ad business.

Do you think that the desire to pay for a thing is the only indicator of whether that thing is valued? If not, what do you mean by "[people] don't actually value the news"?

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#16

Post by conception »

superxpro12 wrote: post #2

The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?

It’s unfortunate we haven’t solved the micro-payment problem. Crypto was an obvious solution but anything would require a hefty network effect. But imagine like a starbucks card or whatever you have your micropayment card, and it auto reloads when it hits zero with 20 bucks or whatever. When you visit the times, a modal pops up, “This article costs $0.02. Read it? y/n or $1 for a day pass”. Sure pirates will get around it but they already do. Just make it grandma easy and you’re done. It’s just the money probably isn’t good enough for VC dollars to roll something out with enough big players to jump in.

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#17

Post by wrqvrwvq »

cathyreisenwitz wrote: post #3

Making newsrooms beholden to donors is not ideal, but it's better than being beholden to advertisers.

Discussion of the free-press in america or elsewhere invariably suffers from lack of historical perspective. Without oversimplifying, the press has always been biased and ideologically motivated to a degree that few appreciate. Because of "all the president's men" and other films lionizing the press' infallible, dogged, ruthless dedication to the truth, people suddenly believe that every journalist is "supposed to be" a paragon of truth-seeking objectivity, dogmatically devoted to the dissemination of "truth to power", but historically and today and even during watergate, the press was a gang of jackals doing yellow muckraking. This has its purpose and we shouldn't hate journalists for doing their job, but it's a complete category error to assume that the press is there to report honestly and objectively.

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#18

Post by afavour »

idle_zealot wrote: post #6
superxpro12 wrote: post #2

The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries? If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests? Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.

I see that as more of an ecosystem problem. In a world where multiple news organizations have cracked the nut of providing free news you rely on different outlets providing different perspectives. I'm not sure it's possible to make a news organization have absolutely no bias at all.

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#19

Post by clickety_clack »

cathyreisenwitz wrote: post #3

Making newsrooms beholden to donors is not ideal, but it's better than being beholden to advertisers.

Why? It’s not clear to me that the motives of a small group of people paying to control the news that I see are better than the motives of a variety of companies trying to get me to buy razor blades and Jeeps. At least in the latter case I know that “big razor” cares about selling razor blades. Who knows what big donors are trying to get me to think.

Re: Making the news available at no cost is a victory

#20

Post by iron_albatross »

droolboy wrote: post #15

As a Canadian with "free news" it's not great. You get media outlets that almost never criticize the government for fear of getting defunded. We saw this with the lack of coverage on major bills just yesterday.

How does this happen in practice? Wouldn’t the privately funded news companies still cover the story? Or are all the news companies publicly funded?
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