So news sites need to fund journalists and somehow make enough money. Bs sites just need to make cheap shit content fast enough to sell enough ads or "zing the libertard" merchandise.
Social media is killing it but not because they not paying per link. And making them pay will make the problem even worse.
Unfortunately I don't have any solutions. Everything that comes to mind ends up no better than now.
Had a thought about this.
We could once have argued that volunteer editors would bullshit too much for use in an encyclopedia. But Wikipedia taught us that a special kind of person will contribute high quality edits for free in their spare time, just because they want to fight against knowledge scarcity.
That same knowledge contribution instinct could be tapped for news. That gives us back news without seo spam essays and ad cascades. In fact one of the most reliable sources of world news is already the Wikipedia current events index. I feel like this idea could scale up a bit more to specific niches, like various industry news, local news, special interests, etc.
I want to connect with journalists that share the news accurately, for free, and without abuses of my attention. I'm sure they exist. I think it's a matter of finding them, tracking reputations, and moderating the resulting Libre News Desk.