Toward a viable model of journalism

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Toward a viable model of journalism

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

T Zero posted:

To this forum I pose the following questions:

Be honest: Where is the first place you usually hear about news? Facebook? Twitter? Your groupchat? Or do you actually pick up the paper every morning?

I have a subscription to The Economist. I'm usually 1-2 weeks behind, so other than single big events (7 October Hamas in Israel, for example) I usually don't know about anything news until it's a bit older than new. Big events show up in my Instragram feed.

T Zero posted:

How do you support people doing the kinds of journalism you find valuable?

My subscription costs more than $500 / year. I'm in Australia and AUD is worth considerably less than USD. I also subscribe to their YouTube channel and while I have an adblocker I assume having subscribers and putting up videos that get watched by thousands of people still generates some income.

T Zero posted:

Do you pay for any forms of media? Why? Or if you used to, what made you stop paying?

Only The Economist. I sometimes poke around The Conversation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website. Both are free.

T Zero posted:

Do you have an idea for a media business model?

No, I'm reading this thread hoping to see something that makes sense to me. I do not think the funding model for The Economist is viable long-term in its current form and I don't know how they might change.

T Zero posted:

What's an obscure or non-mainstream source of news you found to be useful or reliable?

I read Gwynne Dyer's columns whenever he gets around to posting them on his website. He's syndicated across dozens of papers around the world, none of which I read. He's also 80 years old and clearly living off of an archaic business model. Part of the reason I'm here is to ask about other public intellectuals / independent journalists who might be A) younger and B) working in a business model that might last longer than a few more drying-out years.

T Zero posted:

Should there be government funding for media a la BBC? Or a bailout for ailing local news outlets?

I think arms-length government funded news such as the BBC (or the other Commonwealth analogues, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) are useful and valuable, and that there are ways to minimize government-of-the-day interference.

T Zero posted:

How do you think the news media industry will actually shake out over the coming years?

I have no idea.

I also read one person on Substack, Jason Pargin (AKA David Wong, formerly of Cracked.com), but that's free - he's happy to remind everyone that he's primarily an author of fiction and his Substack / email newsletter is basically an advertising vehicle for his books. I've poked around Substack once or twice to see if there's anything there I might like, but all I have found is execrable garbage.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2023 07:44

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 07:17

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

I haven't been paying enough attention to Australian media companies (public or private) to be able to contribute any insights into this change. I'm Canadian, in Australia for about 5 years, so the Canadian laws are also very interesting to me. But, I haven't paid any attention to any Canadian media since I cancelled my subscription (dead tree version) to The Globe and Mail in about 2006. My wife was a regular CBC radio listener and still listens to a few of their podcasts pretty regularly, including Front Burner, which is a daily podcast about current events. They broke the news about Buffy Sainte Marie's identity questions (working with the CBC investigative TV journalists at The Fifth Estate), for example.

The surge of money going to Aussie outfits is interesting. I'm in a regional city of only about 25000 people and the major local news is almost entirely ignored by every Australian news organisation other than the local newspaper, which imposes a rigid paywall on everything other than article headlines. Those headlines are deliberately crafted to omit key details of the story but hint that you'd learn what you want to know if you pony up the dough. And the stories are never picked up by any other organisation later, so in effect there's a monopoly on local news here.

I can only assume there are similar urban / rural divides in news access, along with everything else.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 05:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Toward a viable model of journalism