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Comment by TrevorJ | Hacker News Reader

The whole business model of journalism seems broken. I'd love to see a crowd-funded journalism portal that takes the 'patreon' model and extends it to a stable of well-trained independent journalists and provides them with an overall support structure of editorial oversight, illustration & layout support, etc, etc.

In place of advertisement, the portal could run their own messaging to fund various initiatives (raise x amount in order to bring on a tech reporter for x number of articles a year, etc, etc). Users could choose to fund specific reporters at x amount per month, or just donate directly to the portal for day-to-day operational expenses.

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This exists via Bloomberg. Their $26k p.a. terminals subsidize the journalism.

I haven't found another general interest news org whose journalists take the time to actually understand the industry they cover. One could argue that it's run by a billionaire politician, yet it stays much less partisan than say, the NYT.

That said, these days the best content comes from single-beat sources.

There is that: http://beaconreader.com

caveat: i'm one of the founders.

Oh wow, that's awesome! How has it been going so far? Looks like you have some momentum, what were some of the biggest challenges to overcome?

The problem with journalism is everyone wants it but hardly anyone will pay for it unless it directly helps them in some way.

So Bloomberg and the FT (trade press) have a business model, the BBC has the license fee so doesn't need a business model, and everyone else will go bankrupt slowly – note that none of the other para-news apps which were fashionable a while ago (Circa, Feedly, Google Reader, etc...) have come anywhere close to being financially valuable.

The Economist is profitable.

The 'business model' of big media like the New York Times is to be grandfathered by a bunch of people who are happy to spend a lot of money for the chance to form and color people's opinions. That is infinitely more valuable than the chump change they can make from advertising and circulation, which, as is apparent, barely covers operational expenses. You can see this story play out for all big 'serious' newspapers all over the world.

I think a lot of people like me would pay for it if there was some sensible micro-payment system. I'm hardly ever inclined to sign up and pay ~$10 a month to read an article on a site. If I saw the article in a newspaper at a stand or machine, I used to spend 50 cents buy it and get an entire newspaper for my money. A single article would seem to be worth at most 25 cents, most of the time a dime, and I would gladly pay that amount to read a good article. I don't understand what the problem is and why this isn't implemented yet.

The New Yorker consistently has in depth articles that are well researched and fact checked.

+1. New Yorker is great.

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