Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

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You are 100% right. However, I personally think it is worse than that. Let's just say that local papers found some new feature (no idea what) that could fund local journalism. Do we think the money would be spent to create great journalism or would the money just be taken as profit by posting social media snippets as "news"? I fear that in this post truth world that we don't even have enough people that value the creation of journalism. Most just want to score internet points and get online ad revenue from talking nonsense on their daily podcast. And we've seen that sowing dissent is far far more profitable than creating journalism.

I work adjacent to an online publication business and freelancers are getting ~$750 for a 1500 word article. I don't know how you get actual journalism at that price. Increasingly we're just going to get people dropping concepts into GPT and editing whatever comes back for 30 minutes. I fear that the only way out would be a single one of the dozens of billionaires to step up and donate a self-sustaining grant towards long term journalism excellence. Unfortunately, the last 10 years have shown that they don't care about the world and just want to make their number go up at any cost necessary.

We can shake our head at how wild superstition could be in ancient times.

"Everything needs to be a business model." Maybe the future generations will be more advanced.

When a business doesn’t have a business model, I worry it might be an investor-funded startup or something like that.

  > When a business

My point.

You are conflating two things here - business models and sustainable operations.

Even NGOs can be said to have "business models" in the sense that it was being used here. It doesn't have to be profitable, but it has to at least match operational costs.

Reporters have to eat, and pay costs, its not free. That money has to come from somewhere.

And we are only talking about the production of news copy.

The production of good quality local journalism is itself in the service of a more informed polity and information economy. An information economy that is currently using every trick in the book to suck attention out of the polity.

So you will need even more money to ensure you can compete effectively at scale.

Someone needs to pay for this, and ideally it would be a self sustaining manner, which allows local news agencies to remain independent.

  > You are conflating two things here - business models and sustainable operations.
  > Even NGOs can be said to have "business models"

The narrative force is strong here. I will let you free. A public service doesn't need a business model. They don't do business. Anyone dealing with a budget isn't automatically a business.

The principle of a public service is that it focuses on its service, given its budget constraints. Completely different from a business, they don't have a model in common.

  > Someone needs to pay for this, and ideally it would be a self sustaining manner

Yeag, you end up with a niche. Too small to be relevant to function as the Fourth Estate. These things exist already. Your average citizen isn't going to pay for it. You are basically proposing Fox News, that is the consequence. It is about the whole of society that needs to be informed.

Government funding allows public services to be independent. This is a matter of judicial oversight. "But government bad, market good". It will take a generation of detoxing from the cultural memes and sponsored narratives, to reverse decades of cultural programming.

I'm not trying to beat you over the head with a dictionary, but I can understand when business models is used in places where it is not strictly accurate. I wouldn't personally say the Army or Government (providers of public goods) have a business model, but in the discussion of new agencies, there is enough overlap and history for the term to still hold its meaning.

Even then, using your definition, does not help us escape the point - there needs to be a source of funds for local news. I am perfectly fine with government money being used to pay for it.

Ok! I want to steer people away from the historic model, because that has been a problem and weak point since its inception. I am happy you are open to that.

Eh, even when journalism exists, it is generally just ignored by the public.

Sure, it's generally ignored, but when something important emerges, having the historical record is incredibly useful.

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