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Comment by cgoecknerwald | Hacker News Reader

> "I find it hard to trust any of it, and there are only a handful of sites I will rely on for accurate reporting."

Boy, would I like to know which sites.

I’d start with sites that don’t rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat. So probably subscription sites like the Economist and Wall Street Journal, and public news sources like NPR and PBS. Though for the latter there is the pressure of government to consider.

I often browse the Australian ABC news site and have definitely noted a government influence on it, mostly the anti-China bent of many of the opinion and essay style articles. Interestingly, whenever censorship of the ABC comes up, the ABC is often the most reliable and up to date source of current events. It gives me a little faith in my country's democracy.

That's an interesting take, as often the ABC is accused of pandering to the left and being anti-government. Living outside of Australia I rely almost exclusively on the ABC website for news about Australia, and IMO most of the time it presents quite a balanced perspective.

Both of the subscription sites you mention have ads in both their paper and electronic editions. They receive a significant proportion of their revenues from advertisers. They don't have high net profit margins.

What makes you think they don't rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat?

I was curious about the details, so I looked up The Economist's 2018 annual report. They get 17% of revenue from advertisements, while 60% of revenue comes from subscriptions. Their operating profit is 13% of revenue.

Right, but of course without ads they would save some cost as they wouldn't need people to sell ads, they could get rid of a bunch of ads-related overhead costs etc.

If the operating margin on the ads part of the business is less than ~25%, then they could break even without ads. Of course, breaking even is worse than making 35MM profit each year.

NPR takes a ton of advertising money. Whether they'd be able to exist without it isn't super relevant. The conflict of interest is still there.

I would be more suspicious of the article as a long winded advertisement if he had mentioned the sites :)

But to answer your question, I'd say the best bet is to follow the money. Sites that rely on subscriber revenue are more likely to have good journalism standards than sites based on ad revenue.

Try Blendle: https://blendle.com/ (using it myself, no affiliation)

The Guardian is pretty good.

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