NPR essay on losing "America's trust"

Trust is at an all time low in part because of paywalls

Coverage underwritten by this totally non partisan rich foundation over here will be trusted, though. Opposite party won’t track down the board’s political donations and use it to invalidate the whole news operation. Nah.

 

Like that isn't the original model back beyond Hearst and Colonel McCormick. How many outlets does Rupert Murdoch own?

Again, PBS, NPR and the BBC - all highly regarded - are paid for by public corporations created by governments.

Why not charge ISPs, or search engines like Google or Safari or companies like Meta for their use of the information journalism creates?

The old subscription/advertising/newsstand model was our Alamo.

We lost.

Now what?

 

The colossal, perhaps fatal, mistake was made 25 years ago when the dumbfucks in charge started giving away content on the web for free while print readers paid.

Once something is free, getting people to pay is a thousand times harder.

The fix? Wish I knew.

 

Pivot to video.

 

That I'll pass on journalism by Ivy League J-School oligarchic groupthink.

That the "let's get rich people to set up journalism trusts that helps keep democracy in the light as they rich people see it" is a little too neat for me. Maybe I'm too cynical. Maybe my politics are just too liberal to see the world-betterment-as-defined-by-rich-progressives plan as anything other than a secular religion. That's me. I don't think existential issues can be solved through perfect policy and attitudinal-appropriate bureaucracies. Progressives do. I think they're losing. They think they'll get there. We'll see.

You know what analytics - Google, Parsely, whatever, the good ones - tell us? That people click on crime coverage. They like it. They'll read it. They will even pay to read it. Daily crime stuff - things people almost unquestionably did, or car crashes that indisputably happened.

You know what a 26-year-old, relatively-entry-level crime reporter doesn't want to do? Cover much crime. Rather, they've internalized the "it's a broken system" thing - which, fine, in ways it is - and want to cover that brokenness, which requires expertise, for one thing, and time, for another. And then you have to figure out what to do between the massive takeouts. It's journalism as a term paper - often written like one.

And, yes, the nonprofit model can be good for that kind of journalism, for it snugly fits into the mission of a rich progressive who probably feels guilt about their station in life (tho no conviction to change personal circumstances!) and seeks to give back through funding the kind of society-changing journalism that needs time, money and the absence of annoying impediments like putting out a news product every day.

Look: You make some good points. I'm not going to defend early 1900s journalism as I understand it.

We just have different perspectives on some of this stuff.

 

Our ice cream cones are sufficiently delicious to have helped create trillions of dollars in value for their digital (re)distributors. Alphabet, Meta, X, ad inf., ad naus.

 

Who, what, when, where, why, how.

This seems - in some cases - like a good example of 'why' to me.

We have to strike a balance between the daily metro blotter coverage and the social and cultural and political causes feature. It's hard.

But the current impulse, for example, not to take the police at their institutional word is a good one.

 

I'd add this, too:

Young journalists' skepticism of institutions, including their own newspapers, is a good thing.

We have to figure out how to most successfully harness it.

 

At its universal word? Sure, yes, good thing.

At its general word? Cops sometimes function like reporters. The person who went 118 in midtown, almost certainly went 118 in midtown. There doesn't need to systemic investigation of why someone went 118 in midtown, so as to better understand the thought process that went into going 118 in midtown.

 

Are they? Is it news content that’s driving that revenue or is it free user generated content like the photos, personal updates, vacation recaps, erc etc?

Many news outlets have left X and/or Meta … has it made a dent in either’s business?

 

I think the news content benefit to digital companies like those began 25 years ago, and the billions generated since helped make them what they are.

The news business, now mostly hollowed out, hasn't got much to contribute lately except for a handful of marquee players like the Times or the Post or the WSJ.

All with paywalls, and now we're back to Stengel.

How to save newsgathering at the local level is an immediate concern.