In many respects, Y Combinator, or really, start ups more broadly, seem uniquely ill equipped to solve this problem. Startups seem to be especially incompatible with the business challenges that face media companies right now. While perhaps the S curve of user growth could be attained by a media startup, the S curve of revenue isn't. And if it was, the quality of the journalism it produced would be terrible. Viral content is almost invariably superficial, frivolous and uninformative, or has an emotional quality very different from the impartial, sober thinking that we now need.

Americans have so many prejudices against publicly funded media. There's a widespread belief that if the government funds your media, its editorial perspective will reflect the government's interests. It's a completely misguided assumption in the case of, say, the CBC. The insulation from competition, and, therefore, not having to optimize content for sharing or views is necessary for producing quality, informative content. The New York Times seems to be holding onto at least a sliver of its integrity because it doesn't use such metrics, and instead is funded by subscriptions. But government funding could be valuable too (although there'd be hurdles).

That being said, the person who cracks the code for how to run a lucrative content/journalism business will make a lot of money.