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Making the news available at no cost is a victory

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

#61

Post by chromacity »

boplicity wrote: post #43
idle_zealot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people think you should avoid having bias. That may be the correct thing in some circumstances, but I think it's better to intentionally have bias, to make that bias explicit, and then to intentionally work within the framework provided by that bias. It should be open, public, and visible. This allows for full transparency with the audience, increasing trust, while also giving a public "anchor" to guage your wor…

But that's precisely the evolution we've seen in the past 20+ years. For the sake argument, let's say that Fox News started it by more overtly embracing a specific political alignment for stories and opinion programming. Then, MSNBC noticed and went the other way round. Then, "new age" outlets such as Breitbart News and HuffPo took that to its logical conclusion, not even pretending to describe reality and just focusing on portraying the other side as evil and dumb.

The end result isn't that we're more informed and enlightened as content consumers. It's that everyone has their own version of reality. The boring neoliberal consensus of the old had many downsides, but at least it provided some social cohesion in that everyone was more or less reading the same news.

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

#62

Post by ambicapter »

vablings wrote: post #56
vslira wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts: Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in. Maybe a liberal, democratic state…

The issue is that this is on a balance sheet of a budget somewhere and an autocrat will selectively choose to cut with a knife such they speak ill of them. See the current debate with the FCC in the USA. I am sure there is some kind of financial instrument that could be structured in a way to pay down a news org with public money that cannot just be slashed at whim and will.

So, you don't think any government program at all will work in this case?

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

#63

Post by bjelkeman-again »

vslira wrote: post #48
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?

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts: Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in. Maybe a liberal, democratic state…

Several European countries have something like it. I can only find a very brief article in English on Wikipedia and a longer one in Swedish. But it seems to be reasonably successful in my experience. The Swedish article mentions: Sweden, other Nordic countries, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_support https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presst%C3%B6d

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

#64

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

EGreg wrote: post #60
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?

Wait, I never understood why we need "intrepid reporters" hired by a certain company to enter a war zone, for instance. Everyone has cameras now. They're ubiquitous. What we really need is collaboration online to make sense of the footage being uploaded. And the same for any kind of news. Why do we need the capitalist model again? Look at Wikipedia, Linux, open source software, and more.

Exactly. News is by definition storytelling, and I don't think it's healthy to conflate the two or to pretend that storytellers are reporting on facts.

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

#65

Post by Cider9986 »

afavour wrote: post #23
conception wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arou…

That model doesn't really work, unfortunately: https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-... It has been tried a bunch of times. I think a core problem is unlike most micro transaction opportunities you're asking customers to pay money to be told bad news. To buy something that will make them miserable. There's a fundamental disconnect there that means people aren't going to be inclined to do it.

The conclusion of that article is that the model doesn't work because of processing fees and friction from entering information.

The author discounts Bitcoin because it has high fees, but some cryptos have 0 fees and others have very low fees. With crypto you also don't need to enter any information, simply scan the QR code and enter the amount you'd like to pay.

If crypto was adopted, the model would work just fine.

Personally, I always donate 10 cents to a dollar in Monero when I read an article[1] that I enjoyed that offers crypto donation addresses. Primal[2] has built a crypto wallet into their app and you can see people send "zaps" of Bitcoin when they appreciate a post and it has adoption.

[1] https://www.therage.co/letter-1-keonne-rodriguez/

https://www.therage.co/donate/

https://zola.ink

[2] https://primal.net/maxhillebrand/pop-ch01#:~:text=2%2C184

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

#66

Post by oersted »

vslira wrote: post #48
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?

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts: Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in. Maybe a liberal, democratic state…

Germany already has something like that, it's the Rundfunkbeitrag: a mandatory monthly fee of €18.36 per household, intended to fund public broadcasting (ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandradio).

The BBC is funded in a similar fashion, and is very competitive alongside commercial news media. Other countries fund it from regular tax revenues.

A good public news service that is actually widely watched and legitimately valuable is possible. It's never perfectly independent, but many countries have done it successfully to a reasonable degree.

But yes, you were saying that it could instead be funnelled onto an organisation of each tax-payer's choosing instead of being centralised. It's an interesting idea.

You essentially just force everyone to have a news subscription, whichever they want. I suppose you would need an approved list, which always carries some bias.

I think health-insurance works similarly in the Netherlands. Healthcare is private, but everyone is pretty much forced to have insurance and they are tightly regulated. In practice it's very similar to other countries that have public healthcare, but you can choose your provider.

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

#67

Post by conception »

afavour wrote: post #23
conception wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arou…

That model doesn't really work, unfortunately: https://www.amediaoperator.com/newsletter/microtransactions-... It has been tried a bunch of times. I think a core problem is unlike most micro transaction opportunities you're asking customers to pay money to be told bad news. To buy something that will make them miserable. There's a fundamental disconnect there that means people aren't going to be inclined to do it.

This is a different model though. This is a single site doing micro transactions which I agree doesn’t work. But a global/general one doesn’t exist and probably would be fine. It would have the same friction as adding moves on a phone game or whatever and reload minimums would handle the fees.

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

#68

Post by tr_user »

oersted wrote: post #46
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 obvious answer: a good public news service. I know, I know, that one is problematic too. Some countries have pulled it off relatively successfully, but it's never perfect. The thing is, this is exactly what the government is for: services that individuals don't want to pay for, but are important to have as a society. This is possible if there's a real division of powers in the government. Yes, that sounds…

NPR got defunded and here in australia, the ABC are run by political appointees while the rest of the corpo media start branding it as leftist talking points. You can't fix this if the funding source isn't independent and it's competing against a lot more money

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

#69

Post by nathan_compton »

boplicity wrote: post #43
idle_zealot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people think you should avoid having bias. That may be the correct thing in some circumstances, but I think it's better to intentionally have bias, to make that bias explicit, and then to intentionally work within the framework provided by that bias. It should be open, public, and visible. This allows for full transparency with the audience, increasing trust, while also giving a public "anchor" to guage your wor…

What prevents you have from claiming to have one bias but having another (the one powerful people with money want you to have)?

The problem isn't bias per se - its the desire of some parties to clandestinely shape public opinion. Merely picking a purported bias and then claiming to work along it doesn't do anything to solve the real problem.

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

#70

Post by insane_dreamer »

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?

Publicly funded, like the BBC "tax" in the UK which they used to have (not sure if they still do?)

Or PBS/NPR in the US, funded by taxpayers. Worked reasonably well, and fairly independently, for decades until Trump defunded it.

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