this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Honestly I'm fine paying a subscription if the content is good. There's one local news source that's free that I'd be happy to pay a reasonable amount to view.
Do you pay for journalism?
It probably costs something to produce, and it's probably beholden to whoever pays its wages.
what? I'm really confused by your comment.
When you asked how people pay for journalism I assumed you were asking how journalists can make a website free while still having costs to their business, which is a very valid concern. I was stating that there are definitely jouranlism sources that I'd be happy to pay for if they gave me that option.
Presently I don't pay for journalism frankly because there are no sources that I hold to a high enough standard to say that they deserve some of my money. There are sources out there currently that are free or free with ads that, if they launched into a subscription model, I simply would not pay for because I don't think they have a high enough quality standard. There are some out there which is what I meant by my comment, but they're currently not accepting donations.
Do you think I don't know this? Do you think I was born yesterday?
So the answer to, "Do you pay for journalism?" is, "no".
It's great that you have free, ad-supported news that you enjoy. But complaints about "the outsized influence of ad-money" seem pretty hypocritical when you choose not to pay.
(I realize you were not the original commenter complaining about the influence of ad money, but you picked up the ball so I'm responding to you.)
I do. I support/ sub to Unicorn Riot on Patreon. There are a lot more people willing to do so than you might think. It's no different than a NatGeo or newspaper sub. The advantage of subs is that not everyone needs to pay to fund a site, whereas online ads are so little revenue that a site needs everyone to be allowing them, which is never going to happen.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Nat Geo stopped publishing in June and fired all its regular staff. Newspapers have been in consolidation and contraction for decades, with no sign of recovery.
The disadvantage is that not enough will pay.
If you are talking about printed newspapers, yes of course. If you are talking about Newspapers as in the organizations (NYT, Atlantic, etc), news consumption is actually way up, they have just been struggling to monetize effectively in the digital space, especially since the corporate-backed non-newspaper news media orgs like CNN and Fox don't have to rely on website ads or subs, and can create the expectation of free news content, which directly discourages casual news consumers from paying for it.
This depends entirely on the size and scope of what is being made. There are tons of news content creators who operate through subscriptions just fine. They're also not outputting print media which were always pre-printed based on demand estimates, never printed-to-order. If you think that there are no news sites funded off of subscriptions that are doing just fine, you are misinformed. They're just not the big names you think of, who have lost their mass-appeal due to having to compete with the aforementioned corporate-backed news media outlets who can afford to undercut them.
Anyone who is trying to ask for a subscription in order for people to read the same news they can get on CNN for free is going to fail hard. The key is reporting on stuff that CNN et al doesn't or won't.