Where precisely are the journalists who are paid sufficiently well for their skill that they have liquidity to invest in startups?
edit: alright turns out he's "former chief of staff at the Atlantic" but I still remain convinced he's decently out of touch with everyday journalists' financial situation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Stock_Ownership_Plan
Though I’d note The Economist has staff and former staff as minority shareholders.
While there are successes, the total size of the industry has been declining.
If you do then there is a chance you might become rich.
Wouldn't you like to be in control of it for your troubles?
What did it really cost to start The Intercept, though? Salaries aside - or not.
What can be done with new tech that makes publishing cheaper than ever?
https://pressthink.org/2013/10/why-pierre-omidyar-decided-to...
Nothing. IMO that’s all been done: replacing the printing presses with the internet made it incredibly cheap to publish journalism. Producing journalism, however, remains a solidly human task that resists automation. And every time anyone tries the result is notably inferior.
You (we?) are some of the minority of humans that value journalism. Unfortunately.
Venture capitalists don’t invest their own money, they raise funds from other people and institutions, and make funding decisions on their behalf.
The idea here is that journalists have skills and domain knowledge that would help them make better than average decisions when it comes to media startups.
So: Raising and directing capital, not necessarily originating it.
I do believe generally-speaking that folks with editorial leadership are probably as good if not better as run-of-the-mill domain VCs at assessing founder quality in a journalism context, as the article suggests.
But really we're talking about asking journalists to consider a career in venture capital, which is...fine I guess?