alt Hacker NewsMaking the news available at no cost is a victory
Comments
Growing up several decades ago it seemed like the news was more focused on reporting the facts of current events. Now I know this is naive and there have always biases, but I do miss the way it was delivered in an almost boring way without all of the additional commentary and sensationalism. But you know rose colored glasses and all that.
Making newsrooms beholden to donors is not ideal, but it's better than being beholden to advertisers.
My first job after college was working at the local newspaper right as subscription numbers crested and declined. It's one of my favorite sets of folks I've worked with and one of my favorite jobs I've had.
The editorial section was distinct from the advertising section with the latter selling against subscription numbers and not meaningfully influencing the former.
It got acquired and the staff got caught significantly as physical and digital subscriptions declined. I don't know what the solution is but I know competition for attention and ad dollars didn't help. Our information environment is worse for the decline of local journalism too.
CalMatters is a nonprofit and provides quality coverage. Perhaps that's a viable model at the state level. https://calmatters.org/about/funding/
As a Canadian with "free news" it's not great. You get media outlets that almost never criticize the government for fear of getting defunded. We saw this with the lack of coverage on major bills just yesterday.
I often wonder why the model of Dutch news site https://decorrespondent.nl/ isn't more widely followed. In a nutshell, it's:
* Only paid subscribers can read
* Subscribers can share an article (= copy a unique share link)
* Shared articles are free for anyone
They've been 100% subscriber-funded, zero ads (and I believe also zero government support but not sure), for over a decade now. It's clearly a model that works, at least their target audience (lefty, highly educated).
A list of the donors supporting the paper here: https://www.sltrib.com/supporters/
Even though I like this and support that news should be free but it falls into the same internet trap. The cost to exist successfully on the internet is going up and with AI, it's going to be even more difficult for news orgs to justify this model. I hope people donate with all their heart.
Not to be a cynic, but it doesn't seem to explicitly state if there will be advertisements.
It's a win, but the Salt Lake City Tribune is mostly Utah news.
Who doesn't have a paywall now? Fox News. This is a problem.
Hmmmm, the sentiment is nice but it coming from the Salt Lake Tribune is pretty rich... As someone living in SLC I've seen the "quality" of their journalism firsthand, even helped write a piece about it back in 2023:
That is unrealistic and not sustainable without an ad model or being funded by a company doing over a billion dollars in revenue already.
Starting the timer and will stop it when they become non-free or switch to a paid model.
This appears to be "free as in beer" in that they do not mention any changes to intellectual property considerations.
In 2019, The Tribune became the first legacy publication to transition to a
nonprofit. This move changed our calculus. We are now an independent news
organization, not owned by any person or company.
The "Free News" model is certainly something I've struggled to solve. How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries?
If the people arent interested in paying... what else can you do?