> You are setting a very high bar here.
Considering some of the articles I've seen it wouldn't be hard to do better, but you'd probably have to do better than just not being the worst to get people to pull out their wallets.
> What do you consider "high quality news source"?
Since you asked, here's what I'd look for in a high quality news source:
Low in bias/high in facts: I want to be able trust a news source not to lie or mislead me. Unverified and speculative reporting should be minimized and clearly marked as such. In emerging situations it's better to wait for facts than to publish false or misleading headlines to "get ahead of the story". Multiple perspectives should be explored. No need to give equal weight to both sides of everything, but if there are two sides to something talk about both and explore their strengths and weaknesses. Don't ignore or bury stories that offend, challenge, or fail to promote the writer's or news org's ideological views.
Give enough context/sources for informed conclusions: I've seen far too many articles about someone's controversial statement without any mention at all of what the statements were or without context to them. Same with reporting on laws where the name or text of the law isn't included anywhere. I should have enough information to form an opinion and look for additional information and sources not included in the article. If something must be quoted from social media, quote it in the story instead of just linking to it. Anonymous sources shouldn't be the entire story, just a starting point or a supporting one around verified facts.
Clear separation between ads and content: This includes press releases disguised as news stories. Once while working for a company I was poking around on their network shares and found a video of a report from a local news broadcast that talked about new services we were offering in that area. I thought it was really cool that someone had saved it, but then I read the documents included in that folder and realized that the company had hired a production company, the reporter was an actor reading ad copy written by my company, and that they'd paid local stations to air the content with no indication to the viewer that it was an advertisement. Not cool.
Independent reporting without constraint or consideration to partners/advertisers that might be inconvenienced by the truth: No killed stories because of pressure from some external corporation or industry. No killed stories because it makes the network/news org itself or their friends/partners look bad either.
Transparency: Edits and corrections are great, but the text as originally reported should always remain available and any changes made after publication should be clear and timestamped. Old stories should remain searchable and available even after years/decades. Updates, and especially corrections, should be heavily promoted. Potential conflicts of interest should be avoided if possible and disclosed otherwise.
Ethics are nice: Balance the public's right to know with the privacy of everyday people. Protect the identity of children and those innocent until proven guilty. Don't do things like hound people who are grieving for quotes, or who have expressed that they wish to be left alone. Don't hack into a missing child's voicemail
Little excessive fluff: A bit of color is fine, but I don't care what the author had for breakfast and while it's great to have specific cases as examples, I don't need paragraphs of meandering text about their personal lives either. I want information not entertainment.
Quality writing and editing: That means the people doing the work should be paid well enough that they can more than comfortably support themselves doing it. Talented and skilled people should be attracted to do the job. Reporters or editors who fail to perform to a high standard should be sacked. There are tons of people who are genuinely passionate about journalism. This should be so easy.
> And what do you read / consume? And what do you think it should cost?
The news I consume is often terrible and disappointing and my consumption is not an endorsement of the source or a reflection of their quality. I don't know enough about the costs of journalism today to put a price on it. I'd say that they should charge just enough so that their expenses are covered and they make a very modest yet sustainable profit. A news org shouldn't be attempting to maximize wealth or push to extract every possible dime out of subscribers. That leads to things like accepting money to publish or not publish something, collecting and selling the personal data of subscribers, and filling news stories with ads.
> And yet, you continue to click them.
A starving man eats out of the bin, but that doesn't mean he likes it. I get what can and do my best.
> You do pay: You are the product because adverts are shown.
Well, most people pay... I block ads. My point wasn't that nobody pays for music unless they pay spotify, just that if someone want to make "spotify for news" and offer unique and exclusive quality reporting they have to let people share it, and they should want to. It's free advertising. They should feel free to push ads on non-subscribers so long as the ads are clearly separated from content, clearly marked as ads, the ads have no influence over content, and the ads are hosted locally by the news org, not targeted to the user, and carefully vetted to be respectful to both the content and the user.
I don't think that's a very high bar. It's just basic journalistic integrity, not being greedy, and not exploiting subscribers (or potential subscribers). Is it actually sustainable in this day and age to offer high quality journalism to folks on the internet? I have no idea, but just once I'd like to see somebody try it.