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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

The real problem is presuming the profit model for news is a good idea.

It's going to always tend towards quick-turn around, low-effort sensationalism because that's the most profitable configuration.

Speculation, accusation, defamation, and conspiracies will always get more eyeballs then careful balanced well researched reporting. Lying about something now is cheaper and more profitable than sending a reporter out and getting the facts tomorrow.

Especially after the rise of the modern citizen journalist where the costs of video hardware, production, and distribution are near zero. Naturally people doing near zero-cost content production quickly flooded the market and Bullshit will always be the cheapest content to produce.

There has to be a model where such manipulative lying doesn't pay off. We have to somehow separate how we've structured news from how we've structured entertainment.

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I think that in the old days people read newspapers and magazines because there was no other way to spend time in a bus/subway/train/waiting_room without engaging with other people.

So newspapers were entertainment (and status signals) to a much higher degree than journalists wants to admit.

Being informed was only a small part of the job that reading a newspaper did.

This is why Facebook could take over such a large amount of ad spending while it is still correct that only a very small part of time on Facebook is reading "real news".

https://cdn.baekdal.com/_img/2017/spotify4.png

I don't remember news papers being a status symbol exactly, what I remember is that it was rare for a household to have more than one subscription. Multiple magazines, sure, but not newspapers. I remember categorizing my friend's parents by their choices. "This is a National Post household" or Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail.

the categorizing shows how different newspaper signal a certain world view. They can also signal wealth, class and a political view. so i think they are very much status symbols

> I don't remember news papers being a status symbol exactly

How many people have told you they subscribe to the NYTimes?

Even now, it comes up quite a bit.

But in the olden days of people reading the paper on the train, it was a topic of conversation much more. How many papers one subscribed to, which one, etc etc.

Books have been available for a long time and they also have quite a high status - so unless there was something else to it, why wouldn't most people be reading books?

> There has to be a model where such manipulative lying doesn't pay off.

The more I think about this problem, the less I feel like there's a solution. Ultimately, any news outlet is going to be responsible for whoever is funding it.

You can get the Bezos/Soon-Shiong/etc. model, in which the newspaper is treated as a billionaire's philanthropic project, which is problematic in that you've got one person responsible, and if he's not happy he can stop funding it.

You can do a broader, crowdsourced/fundraised philanthropy model, but if the newspaper doesn't make content that people like, they're not going to donate. You're almost certainly going to end up with a partisan paper, because you either need donors from the left or donors from the right.

You can do the government-funded model, but of course everyone ought to be wary of the government controlling the funding of the news.

So... what does that leave? I don't ask that rhetorically - it's something that I've thought a lot about and failed to come to any kind of a useful answer on. The best thing I can come up with is a billionaire (or group of them) endowing a newspaper with a trust that they can't take back and which doesn't allow them to exert control. But then you've still gotta have someone hiring the staff and running the place - who picks those people?

I really don't know - it feels like a truly intractable problem. I'm honestly glad for the rise of the Substack/newsletter model - at least there, I know exactly who's responsible for the content and what their biases are. Unfortunately, that's better for political commentary and the like - it's just not a feasible model for breaking actual news.

It takes time and resources, which cost money. Ads can't pay for it well enough. The article rightly points out that subscriptions cost way too much relative to the number of sources people consume. Everyone left and right screeches about government influence if taxes are used to pay for it. What's left, wealthy patronage paying for it? People working for free (e.g. OSINT twitter)?

>It's going to always tend to quick-turn around, low-effort sensationalism because that's the most profitable configuration.

Exactly so. Just thinking about to the last time I consciously perceived my media offerings were being tailored based on my previous behavior, I found the choices abysmal. The algorithm is all; but the algorithm sucks. That makes it wholly unsuitable for digestion as news.

What other model do you propose? Government funded news? No news at all? Volunteer news?

Think about how higher education and journals work... There's lots of criticism of them but if you get, say, a masters in chemistry from let's say Columbia, you aren't going to be learning about alchemy and orgones. We seem to be able to reasonably pull that off as a society.

So I guess look at systems with relatively low bullshit information density and try to follow their lead somehow.

We might have to admit that decently produced news is hard, time-consuming, and kind of expensive.

As for "who's going to pay for it", I reject the premise. Society figures out how to pay for things they value. The first step is to create the things of value and get general society to respond in kind.

The first part is mostly done. The second part needs the work. Most people probably don't know about things like say, quanta magazine or whether it's any good or not.

Isn't "getting general society to responding in kind" essentially figuring out "who's going to pay for it"?

Indirectly! Yes. That's the point.

We don't ask about who will pay for the new police helicopter or military jet or who will pay for a bank bailout or corporate subsidy.

But if it's in the public interest everyone puts on their reading glasses and pulls out their calculator and red pens.

This is a function of priorities and we need to make sure they're being intentionally set and then the money will flow accordingly.

This should be in the same priority class as food inspection, water sanitation and road repair. That's how important honest well funded news is to a functional democracy. We don't say, complain that the city fixing potholes interferes with the market of private road repair companies.

So you are basically advocating for government funding it seems, is that correct?

Do you have any concerns about that?

Not necessarily but there's lots of examples if that's the path you want.

BBC, NHK, CBC, PBS, France 24, ... these are all generally regarded as pretty decent. Even AJ+, RT and Al Jazeera has done decent journalism.

We can speculate based on fears or look at existing systems.

Some people gnaw at their fingernails and couch faint whenever "government" is mentioned like it's some masked moustache twirling cartoon villain from a children's show. I hope we can be a bit more reasonable and sober about this. The 101 year old BBC isn't the last thread being unwound from a totalitarian sword of damocles about to befall on an unsuspecting public.

To go back to the previous conversation, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech - all private. There's models that don't involve the government.

Even religious organizations like Christian Science Monitor are decent.

Teen Vogue does decent journalism as well these days, using the funds from their fashion and fluff to do real reporting. (Ex: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/harm-reduction-young-people-...)

Playboy funded some great journalism as well, for instance their 1985 interview with Steve Jobs https://allaboutstevejobs.com/verbatim/interviews/playboy_19... and I quote (again, 1985)

"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."

There's lots of possibilities. The point is to not link the Hayekian homoeconomicus profit machine to the institution of news production. That's what leads to clickbait advalanches

>> faint whenever "government" is mentioned

I don't believe the concern is necessarily the case that people fear current governments. The concern is that monotonic consolidation of power will eventually lead to a totalitarian state. Having a single, government funded, news channel is a tenet of any authoritarian state so likely best to avoid. Naturally the only way to have a single source is to have strong censorship laws which only allow government approved information. This is far riskier to democracy than random crack-pot journalists. Though we may have always lived in free countries, it is important to remember that even today the majority of the world's citizens live in non-free countries. Backsliding is possible - it has happened before and could happen again. I'd rather not think about this either but I think it is important to be mindful of the possibility.

>> BBC, NHK, CBC, PBS, France 24

I don't know anything about the others, but the CBC is considered controversial in Canada.

>> Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech - all private

I don't really understand the analogy here. Elite universities are large institutions, but do not exclude smaller ones (good). Wouldn't this essentially be what we have now (New York Times, Washington Post, etc).

You actually Are pearl clutching and reaching for the smelling salts.

I have multiple examples but you reach for some wild imagination because of some insane fanaticism of all things government. CBC has won multiple Pulitzers and Peabodies but I guess it's actually some communist menace.

Basically all the top countries in press freedom have a government news source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Ra...

Maybe 2 in the top 30 don't

This isn't productive. Let's end this.

Sorry, I don't understand the smelling salts reference but I assume it is non-positive. Is the CBC not controversial among a material percentage of the Canadian population currently? If winning an award from a respected institution provides one with a lifetime free pass, then please inform Harvey Weinstein of the news.

Is it insane to think that some country that is currently free may one day become non-free? It has happened before, so it is not clear by what logic you conclude that it can never happen again.

This isn't productive because your arguments are rather weak and now you are resorting to ad-hominems which is particularly distasteful.

This gets politically loaded quickly. But it's interesting to note few people say "business funded" the same way they say "government funded". Maybe "customer funded" or "tax funded" are better, if the question is about the source of the funding and not the middlemen to the transaction?

Perhaps more importantly, tax payer funding can be done in a multitude of different ways, each as unique as with other types of funding. There can, for example, exist a commitment to create a long term endowment outside of political control.

This is a close parallel to how justice works, which in civilized countries with proper separation of powers can guarantee civilians due process not under direct political control.

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