8
Publicly funded
I'm ready to be wrong but isn't that what the associated press is for?
By selling papers?
Worked for centuries.
What do you think a subscription is? Or do you really think people are going to go back to buying physical papers?
The news article should be free to read. After all it’s only text and it was written to be read. Ads greatly detract from the whole experience.
My proposal for a new model of news would be to be able to create an account for a one time fee of $5, which allows you to comment on articles for $0.25 per comment. Users who are logged in are also allowed to tip articles they enjoy, with proceeds going at least 50% to the author. Another option would be to hide or blur all images on articles unless the user pays $0.25. I think this model could make money, and allow customers to pay as you go and support the content they want more of. A regular subscription is a blank check for them to publish anything.
I mean isn't there a world where we have unobtrusive adverts that are for products people actually want, and can sustain the reporting?
I think people would use less ad blockers if the ads were not designed / placed in a way that feels almost seizure inducing at times.
Unfortunately I think threads/twitter might be the future as a type of open source reporting, as everytime I hit a pay wall I turn around and leave.
adverts that are for products people actually want
This requires metadata fingerprinting which can be used to deanonymize people. And has been used as justification for intense surveillance of users and aggregation of user data. It is also profitable to sell this data to third party data brokers which inturn sell the data collected to other private entities which might have nefarious intent.
Basically, this means that modern advertising on the internet is inherently wrong, even if it's ads that people might actually like.
Mining crypto on visitors' machines. (/s)
Installing ransomware on every computer that visits the site. (/s)
DDOSS ing other news sites through malicous javascript to ensure their is no competition
/s i think...
It’s called a “strategic investment into maintaining competitive advantage” in corpo talk.
Can you elaborate why you think that your comment requires a sarcasm tag?
I'm asking because getting the reader to contribute some CPU cycles whilst they read your content seems to be a way to balance the books, they get something from you, you get something from them.
Note that I'm not a fan of Bitcoin et. al., but the idea of making the reader's computer calculate something or process something on the authors' behalf seems, at least at first glance, a valid and potentially unobtrusive transaction.
First, crypto is mostly a scam. But if it's clearly said that visiting the site will use 100% of your cpu, drain the battery and make your device crawl while the fans go crazy, then sure why not. Otherwise it's a dark pattern. And I thought mining on cpus was near useless these days, but that may depend on the specific blockchain used.
By doing good enough journalism that people want to pay for it.
Sadly, this appears to be an unreachable bar for most.
A percentage is funded by a local media budget as long as they maintain fair and accurate news coverage designed to inform the public. The rest can be subscriptions and ad partnerships. Like they can write an promotional piece and mark it as so and be paid for that.
Strong protections and regulations on what counts as 'news' and then offering subsidies paid for via taxes on Internet/cable TV/etc subscriptions to non-profit news outlets.
Of course that's near impossible and humanity would corrupt it eventually, so I don't know.
I agree in theory, but that makes journalism too dependent on state approval. There are too many journalists throughout time who were publicly discredited and shamed for not towing the line. Publishing something of which the state does not approve is scary enough without the news orgs funding being cut as a result.
Sorry, but did you mention any of these 250+ banned words in your article? OpenAI has said you did and now we are revoking all grants and funding ever promised to your organization. You have also lost your media license and will be placed on a watchlist.
Normalize paywall.
You had to buy the newspaper to read the newspaper, so paying for a digital newspaper isn’t any different. Plus, people will pay a reasonable fee for good content.
Even the ny times has paying subscribers. This isn’t much different from Netflix. As long as the pricing is fair, and the articles don’t double dip by including ads on top of subscription, it will work just fine.
Give people a free trial to test the content.
Aside from maybe my local paper which reports on things NOBODY else cares about, there is not one source that I would want to invest in like that.
Paywalls nudge people towards choosing one or two sources for all of their information. The more sources they pay for, the less value each one provides.
Diversity of information is better for society.
The news organizations that exist eight paywalls are things like info wars, fox and oan. People who've gravitated to those free sites have gotten us to the mess we're in now.
I get my access to most of my news through my local library. My library card comes with access to NYT, WaPo, and the Seattle Times, amongst others. I pay my taxes, my library pays a deal with the news site, and everyone’s happy. Seems like a good setup to me.
Go back to the way things were. Static ads that aren't obnoxious and topical to the article or audience of the site might keep the few that haven't turned on adblockers from doing so. Engage users, don't insult them and get your demographics by opt-in surveys. Offer subscriptions that give benefits. Ask for donations. These things are all possible. Maybe get rid of some C suite types and keep your organization small and lean and just pay the journalists and editors (and support staff that actually create the content/keep the blinky lights on).
To hell with the megacorps and ad execs that have ruined the internet.
How did bookwriting monasteries sustain themselves in the medieval ages?
I think that newspapers should be surprisingly similar to that.
I dunno, but it's not like this.
I've tried supporting multiple news sites, but it's always something. Like the site just crashing before I can get to pay, or an endless captcha, or my credit card being rejected as sussy, but the credit card company claims they haven't declined anything. I've tried multiple credit cards, multiple computers, Firefox and Chromium, always the same.
The Onion is the closest thing to news I successfully paid for.
Ive heard all kinds of cope before but "I would pay them but they dont accept my payments" is wild. Hundreds of millions of people around the world figured out how to pay for their news but somehow you are unable to no matter what you try. My 80 year old grandma can subscribe but somehow you are completely unable to. You've gotta agree that sounds pretty suspect.
Good question. What pisses me off is that all these websites want $9.99 monthly subscription while I want to read a single article. There's no viable micropayment system where I could pay 10 cents for one article access
I wish that was possible too but if you pay by card, they gotta pay like 30 cents for each transaction
People need to get used to paying for things online.
If more people are willing to do it, the cheaper it can be for each of us.
If your news is free, it's trying to sell you something.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
8 points (100.0% liked)
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