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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

This is stupid. If you're a corporation, you don't get donations. You charge customers for a service. If you want donations, start a non-profit.

As a New Yorker, I'd gladly pay a yearly fee to go to BuzzFeed-sponsored events. But if I'm going to donate to support journalism, there are lots of solid competitors for my money.

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Journalism is in an on going funding crisis. I hear what you are saying, but there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content. This is probably "their own fault" for training the public to expect free online content, but at this point every possible business model is on the table, including asking for donations in association with articles on highly charged issues.

> there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content

I don’t fault them for trying. But if there are “many alternatives with near identical content,” what is lost in their going?

There is ad-funded free content and quality content behind paywalls. Donor-funded nonprofit journalism exists in some markets. But donor-funded private enterprise? Foolish.

> If you're a corporation, you don't ask for donations. You charge customers for a service.

Why? Because that's how it's always been done?

Should they charge customers for a service even if it's less profitable than asking for donations?

Because a for profit business is ... for profit. If they manage to stay in the black, I’m “donating” my money into investors’ pockets. If they stay in the red, my donation is meaningless because they’re death spiraling anyway.

No, thank you.

So what you are saying is: you would gladly pay a mandatory fee, thereby gating folks who cannot afford this fee from the content, rather than pay a donation of any amount you wish and still allowing those who can't afford to pay to read the content? In the end, there is zero difference to you in either case, assuming you pay them the same in both, so you're literally gate-keeping news based on ability to pay because you think it's weird that they are for-profit and asking for donations.

> you would gladly pay a mandatory fee, thereby gating folks who cannot afford this fee from the content, rather than pay a donation of any amount you wish and still allowing those who can't afford to pay to read the content?

It’s a tragedy of the commons. Paywalls force everyone who values the content (and can afford it) to contribute. (This also guarantee resources for the organisation, which reinforces the content quality.) Donations, however, risk subsidising free riders who could have paid but didn’t. There are also fewer checks donors have on a private company than a non-profit.

There are plenty of quality journalism non-profits. There is no sane reason to donate to a private company over one of those groups.

Paywalls seem to not actually be guaranteeing resources for journalism, in practice. If you mean "In the cases where paywalls work, ..." then sure. But that's exactly my point - what is a rational, profit-seeking, red-blooded, capitalist company to do when asking for donations is more likely to make money than selling goods and services?

I don't understand what the risk of subsidizing free riders is. Is subsidizing free riders a bad thing?

I don't understand why donors having fewer checks matters. Do donors have less power than customers of a paywall?

Do you have the same concern that when you buy a product from a for-profit company, your money is going into investors' pockets if they're successful and meaningless if not?

All I want to do is voluntarily use my money in a way that yields good outcomes for me. It doesn't really matter to me whether BuzzFeed wants to use all $100 I give them, or wants to use $95 of it and send me a tote bag with the other $5 that I'll stick in a closet and never use. It does sort of matter, I guess, that they're not incorporating as a non-profit if there are tax benefits to doing so. It does sort of matter that the money is going to a sustainable company, but maybe paying back investors is the best way to ensure that it's sustainable. But apart from that - why is it better for me if they come up with some artificial way to make things look like a sale?

I don’t know. This represents a kind of Coaseian solution for the provision of a public good. There’s nothing wrong with alternative funding models. Another example which we don’t see much of in the us is direct government funding of media, which has had good results in a few places.

They could become a non profit with a journalism branch like National Geographic used to be before they split off their magazine section and sold it to Fox.

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