[HN Gopher] Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to ...
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Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to Home
Author : mooreds
Score : 356 points
Date : 2026-01-13 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (buckscountybeacon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (buckscountybeacon.com)
| b40d-48b2-979e wrote:
| Local journalism has an incentive to serve its audience as they
| are easily held accountable as such. These media conglomerates do
| not. They can just shut something down without a care when they
| disagree with a population and publish unpopular slop (crime
| news, engagement bait, whatever), and it's suddenly unprofitable.
| maztaim wrote:
| Block Communications just closed two papers in Pittsburgh this
| year. The Post Gazette has been around since 1786. There are
| fewer and fewer[1] options available and I suspect this is a
| disturbing trend across many locations.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Newspapers_published_...
| pastor_williams wrote:
| This is why I subscribe to my local city and regional newspapers.
| Similar to emailing my representatives about political issues
| that are of interest to me. It isn't much and I'm just a drop in
| the ocean but at least it is more than complaining into a void or
| just reading other's complaints online and getting depressed.
|
| For more local issues I can really feel like I am making a
| difference. We have sidewalks all the way to my kids' school and
| a crosswalk now a year after I made it my cause and messaged city
| planners and councilmen.
| Popeyes wrote:
| Rightmove, the property sales website, absolutely destroyed local
| journalism in the UK. It was written on the wall, but local
| newspapers had all the local listings for property and other
| services. A local newspaper was 60%+ of house sales, but that
| advertising revenue paid for local journalists to sit and read
| council papers and attend meetings and get people out in the
| community. Nowadays, local journalism, even from national
| broadcasters like the BBC is a shadow of its former glory.
| 1a527dd5 wrote:
| Yeah I remember going through those pages as a kid; my local
| "chronicle" had loads in.
|
| I love Rightmove as a shopper, but it's 2nd-4th order effects
| have been disastrous.
|
| There have been attempts to unseat Rightmove (e.g. boomin) but
| it's such a behemoth in it's industry that is tantamount to
| wanting to unseat Google.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you are selling a house you have to list on rightmove.
| You're not going to choose to list on fewer sites. The
| question then comes if you're selling, why list anywhere
| else.
|
| As a buyer it's terrible - I want to be able to see size of
| property (from the EPC, as I trust that more than the estate
| agent), the sale history, the EPC data, the council tax band,
| the map of the plot.
|
| I can find that all out manually by hunting for the real
| address and going from there, but it should be there directly
| (and filterable)
|
| As a seller you're forced to use rightmove as that's where
| all the buyers are
|
| As a buyer you're forced to use rightmove as that's where all
| the sellers are
|
| As a competitor how can you argue to an estate agent they
| should spend money with you as well as rightmove
| pbronez wrote:
| It's interesting that property ads, and classifieds more
| broadly, benefit from a centralized platform but journalism
| itself does not. It's an uneven impact of the technology shift
| from printing presses to digital. Why didn't the drop in
| publishing costs make local journalism MORE accessible?
|
| Perhaps it did in minor ways. Facebook Groups, NextDoor,
| CraigsList, etc make it easy for anyone to share information
| with their neighbors. Turns out most people just want to sell
| something or complain about nothing. These activities benefit
| the author but nobody else.
|
| Local journalism has benefitted a little bit from this dynamic.
| Regional news organizations put together decent digital
| platforms and run articles. But they don't seem to pay as
| well... again because the revenue spread out.
|
| Honestly, I'd love to treat local journalism as a public good.
| Could you fund a credible local newspaper through taxes? It'd
| be WAY cheaper than a school or police station.
|
| The problem is: how can you trust part of the government to
| keep an eye on the rest of the government?
|
| Perhaps you could impose a mandatory journalism fee based on
| the municipal budget. Whatever you spend, a sliver goes to the
| journalists for oversight.
|
| Local governments spend about $2700 per person. Population of
| 10,000 means a budget of $27M. Give 1% of that to a journalist
| and you have $270k... enough for a salary, website and some
| equipment.
|
| You could require that money be paid to a non-profit as a
| grant. Probably better to elect an Editor in Chief though...
| that way you can appeal directly to the citizens for validation
| of the oversight. If you just pay a non-profit, they'll be
| incentivized to serve whoever writes the grant... which would
| be the people you're trying to hold accountable.
| mywittyname wrote:
| What you're describing is a lot like NPR. Which was great,
| until the people in power decided to pull that funding.
|
| The problem with the government is it doesn't like oversight.
| So in this situation, you need to devise a scheme where the
| government is forced to pay something, but also has no
| control over that money. Which is a hard problem.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I don't know that I would describe NPR as "great". One
| specific example that sticks in my mind was a story they
| did about firearms. The host kept using the word
| "automatic". Knowing something about firearms, it was
| apparent to me that it was being used as shorthand for "not
| a revolver", but the host was implying that it meant
| "machine gun". Revolvers are so uncommon that there's
| really not any useful value being passed in attaching the
| word "automatic" when describing a gun unless you're
| describing something that is subject to the NFA.
|
| Or, more recently, there was a deep dive into the Chicago
| parking meter deal. I don't think anyone needs convincing
| that it was a bad deal, but one thing that they said was
| that the new owners have "already received back all the
| money they paid out". Okay, but please expand. This was for
| an economics show, so is the recovery just a gross dollar
| comparison (e.g. they've received back more than $1.1B), is
| it inflation adjusted, does it exceed the time value of the
| money that was given to the Daley administration? It
| wouldn't have taken but another 30 seconds to make it
| clear, but by not saying I'm 99% certain they were focusing
| on gross dollar comparison and ignoring the value of 2008
| dollars vs. 2025 dollars. In turn, that sounds like it's
| playing towards the audience members that don't understand
| why the total of payments for their mortgage is so much
| more than the purchase price of the house.
| BadCookie wrote:
| It doesn't seem insurmountable. A simple tax credit that
| reduces taxable income when someone spends money on
| journalism could make a real difference.
| squeedles wrote:
| This article should be at the core of any discussion about media
| concentration. The vast consolidation of radio stations is well
| known, but the same thing has been happening to small local
| newspapers. In both cases, you end up with a voice speaking to
| the public from afar, not local people talking to your community
| about issues that are important to your neighbors.
|
| At that point, most people just go to the gossip corner of social
| media and spend the rest of their day being fed six hours of
| outrage.
| axus wrote:
| Social media groups should have a role to play in local
| journalism, or at least debate of local issues. Would love to
| see the passion and information sharing of a gaming Discord
| server, but focused on my county.
|
| Haven't used Nextdoor, maybe its similar?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Facebook groups tend to have this, at least in the USA.
| Reddit too in bigger cities/towns.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| In my experience, local reporting has stagnated so badly that
| they now survive by kissing up to whoever is in power. The
| majority of pieces are puff pieces commissioned by the subject or
| friend of the subject, be it a school superintendent or local
| town council or what have you.
|
| And yes, the bias is heavily to the left. I am very centrist in
| my views so a left or right leaning bias would be upsetting.
|
| We live across the river from Bucks County PA in NJ, Bucks County
| journalism and the NJ equivalent are just shills.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Local journalism has always been like this even before the
| "death" of local journalism. No local publisher would dare risk
| access to local politicans _nor_ risk public ad revenue.
|
| This is also why I'm not convinced about public owned or funded
| journalism that _isn 't_ a cooperative, because that only gives
| additional power to the incumbent who holds the purse strings.
| thunderfork wrote:
| If the bias is towards power, why would it ever be towards the
| left?
| bpt3 wrote:
| Because they live in NJ, generally a Democratic stronghold
| and particularly in the area he described.
|
| There are many parts of the US where the local government is
| 100% controlled by Democrats, so they are in power in those
| areas.
| appointment wrote:
| Thunderfork's question stands: if they are biased towards
| power (democrats), how can they also be biased towards the
| left?
| bpt3 wrote:
| I figured that was the semantic game he (and you
| apparently) are playing.
|
| 1. The Democratic Party represents the left in the US, so
| the left is in power when they are in power.
|
| 2. In other parts of the world, parties and individuals
| who are further left on the political spectrum than the
| US Democratic Party (either nationally or in any location
| under discussion here) obtain power. As those are
| generally repressive regimes, their media is generally
| highly biased in their direction, making them biased
| towards both the left and the people on power.
|
| If you want to have a meaningful discussion, feel free to
| stop being coy.
| josefrichter wrote:
| The murder of Twitter seems to be a part of a greater scheme of
| things.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| You make it sound like it was involuntary for some reason?
| Twitter was more of a suicide than anything.
| zo1 wrote:
| Twitter was a dumpster fire of hateful leftist echo chamber
| activism. X is much better and way more balanced.
| tclancy wrote:
| . . . toward what?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| CSAM and revenge porn, apparently
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Elon Musk is a walking talking advertisement for the dangers
| of social media rotting your brain. But now I'd like to talk
| to you about white genocide in South Africa ...
| Levitz wrote:
| For all that it's worth, from the outside it looks to have
| undergone a real, notable improvement. The feeling is
| exacerbated by the dumpster fire at bluesky insisting that it
| was the worst thing ever and because after the fact, about
| every default subreddit (which already were in a bad state) are
| now terminal with politics brainrot.
| showerst wrote:
| The problem with local journalism is simple: the product is
| produces is not worth what it costs to produce it.
|
| This has _always_ been true, but for generations classified ad
| revenue neatly subsidized it. Once the internet came along and
| blew up that revenue stream, the industry was in trouble.
|
| I'm just not sure there's a good solution to this. Everyone will
| go on the internet and talk about how valuable people sitting in
| city council meetings is, but not enough people want to pay the
| monthly bill to enable that.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| For-profit businesses tend to get bloated and eventually
| succumb to their own growth, one way or another.
|
| Alternative: Start a newspaper who's goal is to be _lean_ in
| operations, basically one person per role, and fund raise it
| from individuals, groups and government subsidies (if those
| exist in your country).
|
| Seemingly people are able to fund things like Indie Games via
| Patreon subscriptions, surely for towns/cities with at least
| 100,000 people there would be a 1% of the residents interested
| in local news, right? 1000 people donating 15 EUR a month is
| already 15,000 EUR, assuming it only gets funded by monthly
| donations of individuals.
| DonnyV wrote:
| Its almost like we should just publicly fund it from the tax
| people already pay.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| That's a radical idea! Unfortunately, it gives a lot of
| ammo to the "anti-socialist" people who are vehemently
| against anything "public" funded by tax payers. Look at
| what's happening in the Nordics for example, where pretty
| much everyone supported public radio/TV at least when I was
| growing up, but nowadays a bunch of political parties are
| trying to have it removed/reduced.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Nordic public broadcasting is some of the lowest quality
| news media you can find. They're not a good example,
| unless the job of public service media is to only support
| one or two political parties at all cost (you know which
| ones).
|
| Edit: Just an example. The funniest thing they've been
| doing regularly for decades now is when they go out on
| the streets with a camera to ask random strangers - the
| common man - about what they think about some recent
| development, like "What do you think about Trump?".
|
| But the "random stranger" common man on the street is
| actually a politician from the journalist's own party who
| has dressed up and showed up on a pre-agreed place and
| time.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Nordic public broadcasting is some of the lowest
| quality news media you can find.
|
| Compared to what? Have you seen what qualifies as "news"
| in other parts of the world?
|
| > media is to only support one or two political parties
| at all cost
|
| I've seen news on Swedish public media that disparages
| all sides of the political spectrum, exactly what I
| expect from public media not taking sides.
|
| > But the "random stranger" common man on the street is
| actually a politician from the journalist's own party who
| has dressed up and showed up on a pre-agreed place and
| time.
|
| Cherry-picking in journalism has absolutely nothing to do
| with public media or not, and I'm not sure why you're
| bringing it up here.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Compared to what? Have you seen what qualifies as
| "news" in other parts of the world?
|
| Even compared to non-government funded media in their own
| countries, just to start with. Or public broadcasters in
| other countries, such as the BBC or PBS.
|
| As for Swedish public media not taking sides, that is
| like saying Fox News doesn't take sides and isn't aligned
| with the Republican party. If you can convince yourself
| to believe that Swedish public media isn't politically
| aligned, then congratulations.
|
| > Cherry-picking in journalism has absolutely nothing to
| do with public media or not, and I'm not sure why you're
| bringing it up here.
|
| How do you not understand? When interviewing the "common
| man" out on the streets, you should do that, and not
| interview somebody who is a high level party functionary
| without telling people you are doing that.
|
| That's like Fox News interviewing "random strangers" on
| the streets, but it turns out to be JD Vance in a wig.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > As for Swedish public media not taking sides
|
| That's not what I said, I said that I've seen Swedish
| public media "disparages all sides of the political
| spectrum", which is way more realistic than "not taking
| sides". We all wish we can be perfectly impartial, but
| that's short of impossible, so the next best thing is
| that it pushes back no matter where it comes from. That's
| what I've seen, but I no longer live in Sweden, maybe
| this last decade it's been different than how it was when
| I lived up there.
| bjourne wrote:
| Keep lying.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Sorry for blaspheming against your god.
| iso1631 wrote:
| There's also issues when the watched are funding the
| watches. If the council funds the newspaper, then the
| newspaper reports badly on the council, then the council
| can reducing funding for the newspaper.
|
| You need it to be independent, so how can you fund it.
| Perhaps a separate precept on the council tax bill which
| is set separately (say by national government)
|
| The BBC funding model attempts to do this at a national
| level, but of course nowadays that's not sustainable -
| part of the failure of the old civic minded establishment
| in favour of the new edgy profit minded establishment
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I bet we could come up with a list of things we don't like
| about adtech, tax those behaviors, and give the proceeds to
| their local competitors.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| What issue from the listed above public funding would
| address? Public funding doesn't prevent the entity to
| become bloated.
| philipallstar wrote:
| Quite the opposite!
| Xelbair wrote:
| It fact you absolutely shouldn't as this put them in huge
| conflict of interest.
|
| how will you investigate corruption if your funding can be
| cut?
| bjourne wrote:
| The same argument applies to ad-sponsored media too. In
| fact, have you noticed that it was a very long time since
| a major paper did an expose of the very sleazy online
| casino business? I wonder why.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| >? how will you investigate corruption if your funding
| can be cut?
|
| Don't make it possible for the current administration to
| cut the funding of the public media? Plenty of examples
| out there in the world where those currently in power
| can't just cut funding to major institutions, I think
| that's the norm rather than the exception in fact.
| Xelbair wrote:
| >Don't make it possible for the current administration to
| cut the funding of the public media?
|
| Surely laws are immutable system and cannot be changed
| ever. It is always perfectly designed without loopholes,
| and especially so when ones who design the system could
| benefit from them.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Absolutely not, no one claimed so either, and frankly,
| why continue discussing with you when you don't seem to
| be curious about a honest and straightforward
| conversation? Screw that noise.
|
| Normally, in democratic countries, you have a process for
| changing laws. Enshrine your public media in those, or
| even better, in the constitution, and you've pretty much
| protected it short-term at least. Add in foundations or
| whatever concepts your country have, to add more layers
| of indirection, and it's even more protected.
| Xelbair wrote:
| You can really see how well such system works by
| observing USA right now.
|
| Only way you could have any form of public financing of
| such endeavor without conflict of interest is to have
| multinational organization funded by every country.
|
| Or you end up with BBC.
|
| EDIT: to elaborate even further - you didn't even address
| the problem that ones designing this system would have to
| work against their own best interest. just wishy-washed
| that part away.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'd say the US is a pretty shit example, given it's run
| by corporations right now, and lacks a judicial arm of
| the government that actually enforces the country's own
| laws. But to each and their own.
|
| Again, with an open mind, go out and read about how
| publicly funded media works _outside of the US_ (and UK,
| since you seemingly have a set mind about BBC too), and
| there is a whole rooster of different methods for funding
| these kind of things, yet letting them be independent.
| Some of these institutions are over 100 year old, yet
| still independent.
|
| I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out how
| they made that work :)
| zeagle wrote:
| That sounds a lot like a newspaper subscription. I subscribe
| to my local (physical) paper once a week for this reason.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, as long as you remove the "for-profit" part, it's
| essentially that. Once it's a for-profit business, it
| perverses the incentives, and it'll be a race to the bottom
| or a race to see what subscribers can survive the highest
| prices, which is exactly what we wanna avoid :)
| ecshafer wrote:
| Non-profits don't really stop any of that. Plenty of non-
| profits are after perverse incentives to gather as much
| money as they can to just pay higher ups more money, and
| use the non-profit status to pay employees less.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Maybe there's a third way. What about a company owned by
| a "perpetual purpose trust" - i.e. a trust with a defined
| purpose that is legally binding. It's the only
| shareholder, so no extracting value and all profits have
| to comply with the trust's bylaws in how they are used.
| Patagonia (US company) is one example of this; it's
| profits are legally bound to go toward environmental
| causes.
|
| Bosch and Zeiss in Germany are comparable - they are
| Verantwortungseigentum (Steward-Ownership).
| chrisweekly wrote:
| That sounds kind of like a B-Corp, innit?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| That's a third-party certification that can be allowed to
| lapse, not a legal or legally enforceable status.
|
| https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/
| buellerbueller wrote:
| This is the business model of The Guardian:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Plenty of non-profits are after perverse incentives to
| gather as much money as they can to just pay higher ups
| more money
|
| Where is this specifically, in the US? Usually the laws
| of the country prevent this, since they're you know...
| Non-profits... But wouldn't surprise me there are a few
| leftover countries who refuse to join the modern world.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The US has this problem. There aren't really rules on
| paying executives as much as you want, or having bonus
| structures based on fundraising, as long as the board
| okays it and considers it as contributing to the mission.
| It is non-profit because it doesn't pay out profits to
| investors. This is a large way corruption happens in the
| US, ie a lot of those "X politician foundations" pay
| modest amounts of money to some cause, but a large
| percentage of the donations go to the executive as a
| salary for running the corp, the executive is the
| politician. Its a big shell game.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, seemingly a local problem rather than a problem
| with non-profits, unfortunately :/ Hope things get better
| over there over time!
| Amezarak wrote:
| What country do you live in and can you link to the laws
| regulating nonprofit employee pay so that we can compare
| and use them as a model?
| philipallstar wrote:
| You just find the optimal point for the most people if
| it's for profit.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I doubt that's true in practice, although I know many
| capitalists _know_ that to be true in theory.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think that only holds if company ownership is not close
| with company leadership. Is a "subscriber owned"
| newspaper model possible? Like how co-op stores are at
| least nominally owned by their customers.
|
| I could also imagine a system in which a local newspaper
| was actually run as a public utility by an independent
| corporation, but explicitly chartered and subsidized by a
| town/city/county.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Modern-day patronage is kind of different from a
| subscription. It's a lot like a "pay what you want"
| subscription model, but people seem a lot more generous
| when you express it as a "donation with early access to
| premium articles" rather than payment for goods and
| services.
| zeagle wrote:
| That's really fair. I think of my donations and support
| and usually higher than I would want to subscribe for!
| komali2 wrote:
| I wonder if a newspaper co-op is a viable idea?
|
| I do feel like there's a turn happening in the economy, or at
| least, some new scene growing. Or maybe I'm just finally
| becoming aware of it. That being, rejection of monopolized
| products.
|
| I've never seen so much activity around Linux, for example.
| Or, I follow a content creator called SkillUp who just
| launched a videogames news site with revenue purely from
| subscriptions, and apparently they got way more subs than
| they expected. And as has been mentioned, lots of indie games
| have been getting funding lately, and a relatively small
| studio just crushed the game awards circuit.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Unsure about a newspaper per se, but there are a number of
| news blogs that are co-ops.
|
| Examples I know of in Canada include:
|
| - NB Media Coop: https://nbmediacoop.org/
|
| - Pivot: https://pivot.quebec/
|
| Also, here's a game dev co-op from Montreal that has been
| around since 2012 as a bonus: https://ko-opmode.com/
| bee_rider wrote:
| How many people would 15,000 EUR employ in your area? That's
| significantly below a living wage for _one_ person in the
| US...
|
| Maybe an incredibly lean organization could make it with
| 150,000 EUR? All digital, 3-4 really devoted employees.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > How many people would 15,000 EUR employ in your area?
|
| 3-4 people easily, probably closer to 5-6 in reality.
| Minimum salary in my country is around 1200 EUR/month, but
| we also have free health care for everyone and other anti-
| democratic things.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Ah, I had a brain-fart, was thinking yearly instead of
| monthly. Sorry!
| glaslong wrote:
| The only reliable funding sources then seem to be local car
| dealerships and lawyers who want puff pieces / ads about
| themselves. I think we need to acknowledge that communities
| producing news about their region is a public good and thus
| should be funded with taxes.
| afavour wrote:
| It's not flawless but public funding for journalism is about
| the only answer here, I think. In the UK the BBC offers
| newscasts for different regions of the country... while they
| don't exactly do a ton of hard hitting journalism they _could_
| if the money was spent more wisely.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Have you ever listened to NPR and not been subject to Gell-
| Mann amnesia?
| palmotea wrote:
| > Have you ever listened to NPR and not been subject to
| Gell-Mann amnesia?
|
| Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
|
| Personally, I support public funding of journalism, but
| there needs to be _a lot more_ of it. Enough to support
| competing outlets in most markets.
| aeternum wrote:
| Isn't the whole idea of freedom of the press to act as a
| check to governmental power? With state-run media you
| tend to get lots of propaganda and little actual news.
|
| Personally, I support a ban on public (taxpayer) funding
| of journalism. Keep it independent.
| intended wrote:
| This position is suitable, for the 1990s. Even then, the
| BBC showed that public journalism != propaganda.
|
| In fact, the evidence is that if you build institutions,
| you can actually have very effective public options.
|
| However, in the current era, news is simply being
| outcompeted for revenue. Even the NYT is dependent on
| games for relevance.
|
| And the attack vectors to mould and muzzle public
| understanding have changed. Instead of a steady drip of
| controlled information, it is private production of
| overwhelming amounts of content.
|
| Most good people are fighting yesterdays war, with
| yesterdays weapons, tactics and ideas when it comes to
| speech.
| aeternum wrote:
| The real reporting now comes from individual creators
| often with a gopro or cellphone camera and a
| youtube/tiktok channel.
|
| It's cheap to make, doesn't require state/institutional
| funding. It's also quite hard to buyout all the creators
| and thus at least slightly resilient against the usual
| attack vectors.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Just government power? Corporate media is no less
| afflicted by this problem. Small-time journalism is just
| as capable of being tendentious. Advertising also shapes
| coverage, as subscriptions and reader purchases never
| cover operating expenses.
|
| In any case, this is not a problem to be solved. I do
| think the media should stop concealing or misrepresenting
| their political leanings. They will always be there.
| Everyone has a POV. You might as well openly advertise
| what that POV is. Then it is up to readers and viewers to
| draw from multiple POVs (which they might not do, but
| that's just life).
| afavour wrote:
| > With state-run media you tend to get lots of propaganda
| and little actual news
|
| I think the BBC are a good counter to that argument. No,
| they're not flawless but over the decades they've
| delivered plenty of journalism that's held government to
| account.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The BBC just like any other news organization is not
| neutral. It sometimes leans left and it sometimes lean
| right. The problem is that this "leaning" is never
| disclosed.
|
| If a newspaper is comfortably right-wing/left-wing and so
| on, I don't care about their biases because at least you
| know that if you read it, you are going to get a
| "version" of a story that fits the overall narrative of
| the outlet.
|
| When it comes down to publicly funded news outlet though,
| their neutrality is disputable and on top of that you end
| up paying through your taxes for "news" that have either
| been downplayed or exaggerated depending on who is
| reporting on it.
|
| So as a tax payer, what is there to gain from being
| manipulated (at best) or lied to (at worst) by an
| organization who is supposed to be neutral but who isn't?
|
| I wish it wasn't the case but there has been too many
| stories in the past in the mainstream media that turned
| out to be either misrepresented or made up and there was
| rarely any retraction/apologies on the subject.
|
| And just in case you think that only right wingers have
| problem with the BBC (for example), the accusations of
| biases come from the left and from the right of the
| political spectrum so this is a problem for everyone.
| tialaramex wrote:
| You don't seem to offer a better solution only a reason
| why you don't like this one.
|
| Of course the BBC is unavoidably propaganda - even just
| unconsciously - that's why this Hafler Trio track from
| 1984 exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIobKBy8XOs
|
| I also have personal experience that they're far from
| infallible, a friend lied to them about our farcical
| "Potato powered" computer+ and for a while their news
| story about this was actually available as if it was real
| news not a joke.
|
| But they're clearly _trying_ and "not good enough"
| doesn't seem like an adequate justification for giving up
| and saying we'll just go without democracy then. If this
| is the best we have then this will have to do.
|
| + The worst part is that this is kinda, sorta at the edge
| of plausible, which is why I thought from the outset that
| it's not a good joke. We didn't build such a thing, but
| maybe someone could have or even has.
| coryrc wrote:
| The current government of the USA could not create a
| similar vehicle. Washington State would hand it off to
| some donor (like previously Inslee appointed a donor to
| ESD which then lost a billion dollars to scammers when
| covid hit) and the federal government, uh, goes without
| saying?
| bsder wrote:
| And, yet, that reporting is better than what 99% of the
| public have in their brains on a subject.
|
| Want an interesting discussion? Talk about "AI" to your
| non-technical family members. You'll take the NPR Gell-Mann
| effect any day over what they've gotten from other sources.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Public funding is not the solution. Too many conflicts of
| interests. Who is going to bite the hand that feeds them?
|
| Want to get a higher budget next year? You better run some
| stories on the great work that the current government is
| doing or else...
|
| You may say that things won't go that way but since there is
| no way to check then we need to rely on trust and the trust
| in the mainstream media for good or bad reasons has plummeted
| in last decade.
|
| And don't take this comment as an endorsement of paid news
| media, they have the same exact problems.
| intended wrote:
| Currently the most succesful method of assaulting the
| "marketplace of ideas" is by overwhelming channels with
| content. Most of our guard rails and fears were around
| government over reach, not through the attrition of
| attention and via the production of overhwelming amounts of
| content.
|
| As a result, more competition (more speech) has been
| defanged as a solution.
|
| Producing Local news is never going to be more interesting
| and attention grabbing, and thus revenue generating, than
| pure dopamine stimulation.
|
| To keep local news alive, it needs money.
|
| A public news option may seem sub ideal, but the option is
| on the table because the other avenues have been destroyed.
| Hell - even news _itself_ is losing. The NYT is now
| dependent on video game revenue to keep itself afloat.
|
| The common ground of the eralier information ecosystem was
| a result of chance. New factors are at play, and if we want
| it to survive, then we need to address the revenue issue,
| some how.
| afavour wrote:
| > Want to get a higher budget next year? You better run
| some stories on the great work that the current government
| is doing or else...
|
| This is why you fund public media sensibly, outside the
| control of any given administration. It is possible to do,
| though given the current state of US politics it doesn't
| seem remotely likely.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > This is why you fund public media sensibly, outside the
| control of any given administration.
|
| That is a very nice solution but it doesnt work in
| practice. If the budgets are decided by the government
| then there is always the possibility that neutrality on
| some subjects may be missing or that some amount of
| pressure will be applied in order to get some stories
| buried or on the contrary exacerbated.
|
| Since there is no way to know which is which then how can
| you trust it? Personally I don't.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Came here to say this. Journalism is increasingly seen as
| part of the commons (public good), like utilities. Under free
| market forces, it turns into propaganda for capitalists
| (moneyed interests - not workers), the same way that private
| utilities charge extortionary prices because people have
| little alternative.
|
| So the litmus test I use is that if a politician works to
| undermine public funding of journalism, then they're the
| product of lobbyists, or at least beholden to moneyed
| interests in some way, and not a public servant.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| People's satisfaction with the internet is on the decline
| lately, for a variety of reasons. Maybe it'll cross a threshold
| where opting into a local-only net would be worth doing for
| enough people.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| this is what taxes are for
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If you are fine with your taxes also funding the news
| channels you hate the most, then sure.
| exceptione wrote:
| > the product is produces is not worth what it costs to produce
| it.
|
| Media are the fourth estate. As such they are indispensable in
| a democratic state based on the rule of law.
|
| How to kill it:
|
| 1. abolish the fairness doctrine. Selling fakes and lies = big
| profit. => fox news e.a.
|
| 2. Let moneyed interests run the show. Control the narratives
| => poor people voting for the billionaire interests at their
| own detriment > I'm just not sure there's a
| good solution to this.
|
| I am not sure if it is still possible to mention public
| broadcasting because of dominant narratives ("public service
| bad, billionaire company good")1, but left alone they will do a
| very good job usually.
|
| 1) As an exercise, who sponsors this narrative?
| snarf21 wrote:
| I fear that in the last decade, even the PBSs of the world
| have pulled back. They still create content but they have
| been very loathe to come out against any interest that the
| billionaire philanthropists might object to.
| exceptione wrote:
| I don't know too much about PBS specifically, but I
| wouldn't be surprised if they are not immune to Elite
| Capture1
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
| pksebben wrote:
| woof, that article. The examples section doesn't contain
| a single concrete example and after reading the whole
| thing I can't tell whether they're talking about
| academics publishing news articles or congress' revolving
| door. Wikipedia has been struggling lately. Maybe that's
| what they're talking about.
| exceptione wrote:
| effort.
|
| "Andersen et al. 2022 found that about 7.5 percent of
| foreign aid is diverted by elites." etc
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| One problem is the billionaires themselves. It's too much
| power and influence in the hand of a single person. They can
| fun newspapers at loss and have them spread any kind of lies
| or narrowly biased news for decades.
|
| Billionaires would be less of a problem in a world where we'd
| all be multi millionaires.
| snarf21 wrote:
| 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.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Eh, even when journalism exists, it is generally just ignored
| by the public.
| macintux wrote:
| Sure, it's generally ignored, but when something important
| emerges, having the historical record is incredibly useful.
| exceptione wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| When a business doesn't have a business model, I worry it
| might be an investor-funded startup or something like that.
| exceptione wrote:
| > When a business
|
| My point.
| intended wrote:
| 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.
| exceptione wrote:
| > 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.
| intended wrote:
| 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.
| exceptione wrote:
| 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.
| EGreg wrote:
| I never understood why the journalism industry didn't go the
| way of wikipedia.
|
| Britannica was the shining example of capitalism, being sold
| door to door. Encarta was done by Microsoft. Both got disrupted
| real quick by a million people making little edits to an open
| encyclopedia. An open-source gift economy with many
| contributors seems to beat capitalistic systems. Linux.
| Wordpress. MySQL. In general, science / wikipedia / open source
| projects also feature peer review before publishing, a
| desirable trait.
|
| Everyone has a cellphone. It's not like we need professional
| cameras to capture things. What we really need is a place to
| post clips and discuss them in a way that features peer review.
| It would be better and strictly healthier than the current for-
| profit large corporations like Meta or X. That's one of the
| projects I'm building using our technology. Anyone interested,
| email me (email in my profile)
|
| Compare:
|
| 1. https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
|
| 2. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-
| fortu...
| alephnerd wrote:
| Because people have bills to pay.
|
| The most dedicated Wikipedians in specific domains often tend
| to be academics in that space and whose day jobs tend to be
| adjacent to the niche they edit.
|
| It's difficult to find the equivalent for local government,
| because the most knowledgable are already active, in the
| loop, and in the same circles so social ostracism is a real
| risk that they might be viewed as airing dirty laundry.
|
| The number of people in a Chamber of Commerce, PTA, City
| Council, School Board, Rotary Club, local Library Foundation,
| Church Board, Teachers Union leadership, City Workers Union
| leadership, Police Union leadership, and a couple family
| offices may number in the 50-100 range, so no one is
| anonymous.
|
| And finally, most local news groups are now owned by the 3rd
| generation of that family, and most of them have either
| already or are in the process of getting out of the local
| news business.
|
| The reality is, if you want to make an impact in your local
| community (especially politically) you will have to build
| local relationships and become extremely active in existing
| cliques - playing golf at the private golf club, attending
| church or temple, becoming a member of the rotary club,
| contributing to library foundation fundraisers, become a
| junior member of the Chamber of Commerce, etc.
|
| Finally, your pitch is the exact same one NextDoor back when
| they were a much smaller startup. Look at how that turned
| out. Making a Wikipedia type organization in 2026 would be
| nigh impossible given how decentralized the Internet has
| become, and how it isn't a niche platform anymore.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| I think you're right to a point, but that "a place to post
| clips and discuss them" isn't enough. The world is filled
| with clips that are essentially meaningless or taken out of
| context to say something different. In addition to
| aggregation and discussion, research and investigation is
| required in order to get the story behind the clip.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Disagree. Where I live there is a local news website that is
| mostly one guy, who attends city and county meetings,
| summarizes issues discussed and decisions made, analyzes the
| data that local government provides under various
| "transparency" initiatives---all stuff that our local newspaper
| no longer covers. I pay a monthly subscription (which isn't
| even required to read) because I believe that local news is the
| most important news. Nothing happening in the federal
| governemnt or the middle east or eastern Europe affects me from
| a local standpoint, and it's easy to stay informed on those
| events through a variety of sources. But there's very little
| coverage of the stuff that does affect me: decisions of local
| government, boards and commissions, stuff that directly affects
| the taxes I pay and the community I live in.
|
| You may be right that not enough people want to pay the bill,
| but I do and so far it seems to be working.
|
| I stopped subscribing to our local traditional newspaper
| because it's nothing but lightweight feature stories, local
| sports, and reprints of news from USA Today.
| showerst wrote:
| I think that's great!
|
| Maybe that's the answer, hope your town gets one or two good
| journalists who can live off the pool of people who do care.
| Then you just hope that they don't get hit by a bus, sell out
| without you knowing, etc.
|
| I do wish there was a more systematic market for it though,
| it's crazy how much value a few reporters can provide just by
| providing the check on power of asking basic questions to
| those in power.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Then you just hope that they don't get hit by a bus, sell
| out without you knowing, piss off the wrong person, etc.
|
| Reporting does have some dangers.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I think what you have there is cool, but I question if it
| would be sustainable.
|
| In a market where "mostly one guy" can cover the beat that
| might work for awhile, with all the caveats that come from
| depending on an individual, versus an organization, to do a
| job.
|
| In a larger market, where multiple people would be needed to
| cover the workload, I'm not so sure the funding model would
| work. I can imagine the subscription fees not keeping up with
| the step function of adding people to the organization. (You
| need that 3rd reporter to drive subscription revenue by
| expanding coverage, but current subscription revenue doesn't
| support it, so you can't add them.)
| milofeynman wrote:
| We have this also. https://coppellchronicle.substack.com/
|
| Article about it: https://simonowens.substack.com/p/this-
| local-newsletter-cove...
|
| 40%+ conversion rate on substack.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I do agree that local policies are important, but I'm wary of
| "Nothing happening in the federal governemnt or the middle
| east or eastern Europe affects me from a local standpoint."
|
| If there's a theme to US politics these days, it's one party
| or the other trying to get power so they can ram home the
| same policies across the nation, and the hell with state or
| local governments that want otherwise.
|
| Since the advent of social media, there's a huge blurring of
| the lines between national and local issues. The fact that,
| say, someone got shot 2,000 miles away should be a tragedy,
| but have no bearing on my own life. But now one party or the
| other will use it as a cudgel to push policies in my own
| state and locality.
| bluGill wrote:
| If something happens in the US or the middle east I'll find
| out about it - because so many other people need to know
| the same it isn't hard to find enough people to pay for it.
|
| However if something happens in my city - odds are nobody
| else reading this lives in the same city and so you don't
| care. There are only about 30,000 people in the world who
| care about my cities' parks, the rest of you will never
| care (maybe one of the thousands of you will happen to stop
| at a park for one hour of your life - but if we have
| terrible parks you will just head to the next town).
| However I live here, the parks in my city matter to me, and
| so I need someone to tell me about them. Remember I just
| used parks as an example, the school board and library
| board happen to meet on the same night so it isn't even
| possible for me to attend both and that is before we
| account for my kid's having gymnastics at the same night
| making getting to one tricky.
| the_snooze wrote:
| My local issue of interest is how my county and state
| administer elections. I volunteer as a poll worker for
| nearly every election, with a preference for the "boring"
| low-turnout contests like state legislative and local
| board primaries. This experience has given me insight you
| would _never_ get on national news but lots of people
| blindly argue about: voter ID requirements, how
| provisional ballots work, why higher-population counties
| take longer to report results on election night, what
| election night "calls" actually mean, entirely mundane
| failure modes that can slow down the line, etc.
|
| You'd think that for such an important issue like
| elections you'd get more interest at the local level
| where regular citizens can actually get involved. But
| nope. We're always desperate to fill poll worker
| assigments on non-presidential years, even though those
| are the best and least stressful opportunities to
| experience first-hand what it's all about.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Basically everything the feds do winds up getting
| implemented state or locally in a backhanded national
| drinking age sort of way.
|
| When you get into the minutia of policy changes and "yeah
| we'll just enforce what the feds say and let the official
| rules be wrong until someone sues" type behavior that comes
| about as a result it'll have you shopping for bulldozers on
| FBMP.
| intended wrote:
| The roots of the current situation in US politics, arose
| from concerted actions taken at local levels.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Nothing happening in the federal governemnt or the middle
| east or eastern Europe affects me from a local standpoint
|
| The federal government decides the limits within which your
| local government must operate. A good chunk of your taxes go
| to wars in the middle east, and a good deal of the
| politicians in that federal government self-professedly care
| more about a middle-eastern country than the one they were
| elected to represent [1].
|
| To rephrase a saying - you may not care about federal
| politics, but federal politics cares about you.
|
| [1] "if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing
| that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don't
| even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel." - Nancy
| Pelosi, Israel-American Council Conference,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LmnQRnw8I
| venndeezl wrote:
| I believe it's important for you to show up at the meetings
| too, not outsource political action like you do sewing of
| your clothes.
|
| Consistent displays of comity would go a long way to
| kowtowing the politisphere.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The problem with "one guy" is the potentially high standard
| deviation. The one guy can potentially be a careerist good
| old boy club protecting special interest facilitating jerk in
| the same way that any of the dozens of the barely accountable
| bureaucrats in your town can be.
| joenot443 wrote:
| I'd still prefer that "one guy" if the alternative is
| nothing. My Ontario town has a similar character. Lord
| knows he has his biases, but frequently the alternative to
| a loud curmudgeon is just no accountability at all.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Accountability to whom and on what axis? My city's
| apparent "we're poor AF and can't in good conscience say
| yes to any boondoggle expenditure or no to anyone who
| wants to invest anything" soft policy is a Karen's
| nightmare.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| If one guy can make it, then another guy could probably
| too. That's how cities used to have sometimes 3 or 4
| competing papers.
| Amezarak wrote:
| My town as two newspapers and two TV new stations. They
| employ more than a dozen journalists, including an old
| friend of mine.
|
| If you want any actual important news, you go to Facebook
| and make sure that you're following the right people and
| you're in the right groups, because that's where the news
| about local governance and politics actually comes out. The
| papers and TV stations almost always run bland human
| interest stories, business propaganda, press release
| reprints, a huge selection of national and sports news,
| etc. a few years ago, both papers announced they wouldn't
| report most local crimes anymore unless they were
| particularly notorious.
|
| After a few months or sometimes years if a local story has
| become big enough, they'll deign to cover it, usually
| without crediting the people who actually broke the story
| to everyone paying attention.
|
| When local professional journalism is this bad, it's
| nobody's fault but them whe nobody wants to pay for it.
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| I think this is great, and I'm glad to hear that there are
| people out there doing this kind of work.
|
| The main thing you need to watch out for in this kind of
| situation is corruption of the news filtering process on the
| local level. It's much easier to successfully
| bribe/coerce/undermine a single individual running an
| independent newsletter like this than it is an entire
| newsroom. Editors are helpful for vetting sources, providing
| guidance on how to follow up on leads, etc.
| bdavisx wrote:
| >It's much easier to successfully bribe/coerce/undermine a
| single individual running an independent newsletter like
| this than it is an entire newsroom.
|
| Except the problem in the US now is that newspapers are
| owned by corporations that own a bunch of newspapers, or
| very rich individuals/families - and a single individual
| can dictate what an entire newsroom says.
|
| I don't see much of a difference when it comes to
| corruptibility.
| tunesmith wrote:
| parent poster is saying a healthy newsroom is much better
| than one guy. You're disagreeing by saying one guy is not
| better than an unhealthy newsroom.
| intended wrote:
| How is that disagreement with what they are saying?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I disagree that there is not enough value in local
| journalism that people are willing to pay for it. I used to
| pay for my local paper, I stopped when they stopped doing
| local reporting. Now I pay another guy who is doing that.
|
| There may be a question as to whether enough people will do
| this to be sustainable, but so far it's working at least in
| this case.
| atmosx wrote:
| > Nothing happening in the federal governemnt or the middle
| east or eastern Europe affects me from a local standpoint,
| and it's easy to stay informed on those events through a
| variety of sources.
|
| This is something that - for whatever reason - takes a
| surprising amount of time for ppl to understand.
| tptacek wrote:
| Where I live we have like 6 people doing that, and they all
| post summaries on Facebook for free.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That sounds neat, but I wonder how they pay their bills.
|
| I guess it depends on the depth of analysis and quantity of
| reporting. It's one thing to write a summary of the school
| board or town council meeting. That probably isn't a full
| time job. If there's more detailed reporting, fact
| checking, etc, involved I begin to worry about the implicit
| bias that creeps in when only certain people can afford to
| do it.
| tptacek wrote:
| They have day jobs or are retired. We have a local
| newspaper, which we performatively fundraise for (it's
| doing fine), and it staffs full-time reporters; the
| people doing it for free out of interest, on Facebook,
| crush them newspaper.
| altilunium wrote:
| > "I'm just not sure there's a good solution to this."
|
| The democratization of local journalism, where anyone can
| become a reporter: reporting events in the field, interviewing
| key people, and publishing opinions. With the internet, anyone
| could set up their own news outlet.
|
| This idea is quite well-tested in my local area, where
| audiences directly send donation money to individual reporters
| who run their own sole-proprietorship news outlets.
| joebe89 wrote:
| Not sure I agree about this, in the UK we have some excellent
| examples of independent local journalism, for example the
| Bristol Cable that is funded by readers.
| oooyay wrote:
| Not really true. I live in Portland, local journalism is very
| alive here.
| starkparker wrote:
| Maine? Because in Portland, OR:
|
| - the Oregonian's newsroom is in all but open conflict with
| its editorial board, its credibility for breaking hard news
| was already in the shitter before it sold to ADVANCE, and for
| several years it stopped publishing a broadsheet edition and
| shuttered its print facility to cut costs
|
| - the Merc sold out to a Seattle-based group run by a former
| Washington state legislator in July 2024 that's been buying
| out alt-weeklies in Seattle and Chicago
|
| - Pamplin/Trib and EO groups got bought out by Carpenter, a
| Mississippi-based conglomerate, in June 2024 with a rep for
| cutting everything but sports coverage. Layoffs hit both in
| July 2025
|
| Only the WWeek is still locally owned, and it started a non-
| profit and seeking donations in 2024. Maybe 20 full-time
| employees there, at best, and as of 2024 barely above water
| financially.
| oooyay wrote:
| I live in Portland, OR. The Oregonian/Oregon Live actually
| broke the story that the mayor was quietly pushing shelters
| out. Their news broke before I got the city mandated
| postcard I should have received living next to the proposed
| shelter.
|
| KGW broke that the shelter process was occurring without
| community involvement and feedback processes. Frankly, the
| Mayor and three district councilors came to our
| neighborhood meeting. That just doesn't happen in East
| Portland and was not possible without the involvement of
| local news.
|
| Willamette Week is a gem, I agree. They broke the Shamaya
| Fagan story as well as numerous others. I'm saying it's not
| all bad, especially compared to other localities.
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| What I am reading here is "Democracy doesn't come free of
| charge"
| glaslong wrote:
| Another reason I'm pissed my taxes aren't going to PBS/CPB
| anymore, and am praying they can still fund some local stations
| with new direct donation. Lots of communities depend on it.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| You can still donate to PBS, and even to your specific local
| station.
| boelboel wrote:
| The problem as with many things is that people just don't care
| and they just want things as cheap as possible. Even if people
| had a great local journal, there's no real reason to pay well
| for it when you can just figure things out a day later on
| facebook. Quality can go down without most people noticing
| because lots of people couldn't tell apart good reporting from
| bad , a good portion would have to put in effort to do so and
| an even smaller portion would immediately notice. Less
| incentive to go into local journalism if you're bright as well,
| dying field with little chance to go 'up'.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Our local paper put up a paywall so subscriptions help
| subsidize the reporting along with the advertising. I'm sure
| it's a losing battle but you don't get into local news for the
| money.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The problem with that is it reduces the visibility of public
| news even further. You can have a pulitzer prize winning
| report onto council corruption, but if only 50 people read it
| it doesn't really matter.
| palmotea wrote:
| > The problem with local journalism is simple: the product is
| produces is not worth what it costs to produce it.
|
| That's not true: you're forgetting positive externalities. The
| product _is_ worth the cost, but the straightforward capitalist
| revenue streams aren 't enough to cover those costs.
|
| So if you rely on capitalism in 2026, that value get destroyed
| and the community is worse off for it.
| monkaiju wrote:
| I mean I'd be more than willing to pay/donate/support a local
| paper if we had any that weren't just tailing the narratives of
| power. Our local "paper of record" (Salt Lake Tribune) is
| basically a platform for the powerful to launder their actions
| as well as a police stenography platform.
|
| I do subscribe to some larger papers, specifically the
| Guardian, and they're far from perfect. I would happily support
| a local paper with even those same compromises.
| markstos wrote:
| Digital production has lowered the cost, and the Ghost platform
| in particular is a great value for small publishers, bundling
| together the blog, newsletter and subscriptions in one package,
| even now including ActivityPub federation.
|
| And Ghost themselves a non-profit org that doesn't mark up the
| Stripe transaction fees!
|
| One local news outlet recently switched to that, saving about
| %5 on Patreon fees and a second is switching now.
|
| https://ghost.org/
| bpt3 wrote:
| That's Ghost, at ghost.org!
| nerdponx wrote:
| > the product is produces is not worth what it costs to produce
| it
|
| Utility provided is not equal to willingness/ability to pay.
|
| We should stop thinking of journalism as a product to be sold
| and more of it as a public good. That's kind of the point of
| the article.
| beloch wrote:
| I live in a city of one and half million. There are two "local"
| newspapers with histories that, in one case, reaches back over
| a century. One used to have offices across the street from city
| hall and regularly broke stories when somebody stumbled out of
| city hall and into their offices to report dirty deeds. The
| other paper was of an opposing political slant and the two
| papers used to fight like cats and dogs. People would read both
| papers to get a handle on local political winds.
|
| Today, both papers are owned by the same Toronto-based,
| American-owned media conglomerate. Both papers have lost their
| local offices. Some work-from-home types produce localized
| content. Just enough to make the papers look somewhat local.
| Much of the local content is lazily scraped from reddit,
| showing up in the city's subreddit one day and appearing in the
| papers the next. However, 99% of the content is the same as the
| "local" paper in Toronto runs. The former disagreements over
| politics are over, and both papers run the same ranting opinion
| columns.
|
| And yet... You can still walk into any convenience store in
| town and buy a paper copy of these two "local" papers. My
| parents still have both papers delivered, and haven't seemed to
| clue into the fact that they're both the _same_ , American
| owned paper.
|
| It's not just a loss of ad revenue that have killed local news.
| It's media conglomerates who are hoodwinking people into
| thinking they still have local news coverage when they really
| don't.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Consumerism has eaten the world.
|
| It seems to me that the media should have its own non-profit
| designation and should be prohibited from becoming objects of
| market transactions.
| shuntress wrote:
| I don't know what you think "worth" means but if "the money we
| make from this product covers the cost of producing the
| product" then it is _worth_ it.
|
| That was the case until, as you noted, advertisements became
| drastically less valuable.
| atmosx wrote:
| > The problem with local journalism is simple: the product is
| produces is not worth what it costs to produce it.
|
| I find this approach superficial and dangerous.
|
| Maybe local journalism has been superseded or looks like not
| important to the locals. The lack of local journalism IMO will
| end up costing a lot more to any community in the long run for
| obvious reasons.
| showerst wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| And as someone who's seen some condo boards, I can tell you
| that when presented with "we all need to pay a small amount
| of money now to avoid a big bill later" the response will
| generally be "no way!"
|
| It's a tragedy of the commons issue, mixed with people who
| don't agree on the value of it in the first place.
| nazcan wrote:
| I think the nuance is that is doesn't produce what it's worth
| - it's that it's value to society is more than what people
| are willing to pay for it (and also more than what it costs
| to produce).
|
| Of course there will be exceptions to the rule, but these
| dynamics seem pretty strong.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Sure, but the community has to somehow decide to pay the
| people doing that good thing. There are a lot of projects
| that would likely be a net benefit not being paid for.
| Intralexical wrote:
| Externalities, coordination failure...
|
| It's simultaneously worth vastly more to the community as a
| whole than the cost of producing it, and yet, to any single
| individual, the marginal benefit of having it is not enough
| to justify paying for it.
|
| The naive solution might be to collectively subsidize it, but
| then that creates its own moral hazards and perverse
| incentives.
|
| ...It's a bit scary how much of democracy relies on
| institutions that were only able to form because we _lucked_
| into social conditions making them sustainable.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I know plenty of Patreon or Substack supported individual
| journalists that sit in council meetings and report what's
| going on. Honestly with much better signal to noise that the
| local paper.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Local journalism, at its best, is part of a feedback loop.
| Council makes decision -> local reporter writes about it ->
| public reacts -> council changes its mind.
|
| Can a Patreon or Substack journalist play that role?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Absolutely yes. It's happening every week of the year with
| the better Substack-style startups in the UK (London
| Centric, Manchester Mill etc.).
| softwaredoug wrote:
| When coupled with "posts it on local subreddit". Yes.
| intended wrote:
| Yep. There is some network effect nonsense that comes into play
| when it comes to news. Only stuff which carries at the largest,
| broadest, most simplified level survives.
| bartilg wrote:
| There probably is sufficient demand to pay for it, the issue is
| that there is no mechanism for orchestrating such funding while
| remaining uncompromised. If you split out the cost of salary
| for 1 or 2 people, you'd likely end up with individual citizens
| paying pennies to have people sit in and provide this
| information. If you look up the average population of a small
| city, where such an operation would be the least efficient, its
| about 50,000 to 100,000 people. That would pan out to maybe a
| dollar per year to cover the salary - I don't think many people
| would be opposed to that if they actually trusted it and the
| money was allocated efficiently.
|
| However, there is no way to actually get that payment
| consistently. It would have to become a government subsidized
| operation in order to actually extract that payment at a
| consistent distribution, at which point a huge conflict of
| interest is introduced, and faith is lost in the independence
| of such individuals. As soon as this becomes a government
| apparatus, costs grow heavily to account for administrative
| overhead, and there becomes heavy incentives to provide more
| favorable coverage to political figures who are responsible for
| budgets.
| aeternum wrote:
| The answer is never to have government pay, obviously it then
| becomes biased as you point it.
|
| If it doesn't justify a human salary then the right answer is
| usually to eliminate the need for a full salary with tech.
| Current LLM models do a sufficiently good job of meeting
| summarization and will only get better. Those could be
| published and even reviewed by human influencers for
| newsworthy bits.
| bartilg wrote:
| Definitely one of the best options. I think the biggest
| obstacle here is actually getting that information public
| so it can be analyzed and summarized. Local government
| meetings often have no recording to analyze, and in the
| cases where it is most important, there is often incentive
| to keep it private from the public. Additionally,
| government moves extremely slow, with local government
| being one of the worst offenders. Mandatory public
| recordings of government functions would probably be the
| biggest step towards solving this issue.
| aeternum wrote:
| Perhaps humanoids or robodogs will be so cheap in the
| future that we can send a few to sit at the meeting and
| listen.
| mmooss wrote:
| > the product is produces is not worth what it costs to produce
| it.
|
| The product is not _priced_ at what it costs to produce it.
| Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
|
| Why is it priced too low for its value? IMHO a major reason is
| people not rejecting the 'post-truth' era, but embracing it -
| devaluing truth. For example, they way overvalue information on
| social media, because its lack of truth is not a consideration.
|
| Journalists personally are on the scene, talk to key people,
| read the documents, interview experts, and are trained
| professionals in gathering and reporting information
| accurately. Somehow hot takes from someone who hasn't left
| their basement is seen as valuable. Imagine someone on social
| media who did all that work.
| showerst wrote:
| I agree with you on the value > price, but disagree about
| why. If you take out classified (and later internet) Ads,
| almost no newspaper and no TV news in the US was _ever_
| profitable.
|
| It might sound crazy but as a percent of revenue, news was
| actually moving more towards subs and away from ads even by
| the 1980s and 1990s. I used to work with a very long tenured
| editor who told me that in the 1970s north of 70% of most
| newspapers revenue was from ads.
|
| Back then overhead was massive due to printing presses and
| delivery infrastructure, now it's dominated by labor costs,
| but the point stands that doing good journalism isn't cheap.
| Even people who care about the product don't want it enough
| to pay its production cost, and never have.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There are still plenty of local papers that run based on
| subscriptions and ad placements. They're not the big names, but
| I am willing to bet you could find at least one in your county
| if you're in the US. There's going to be a relatively small
| newsroom and a few reporters who do go to public meetings and
| the like to get the news.
|
| The problem is about 25 years ago, a few main outlets bought up
| a lot of publications, from small-town papers to larger
| regional papers, and loaded up on debt to do so, thinking that
| there would be a good way to get that money back. My regional
| paper, the KC Star, built a huge printing press building in the
| middle of downtown, thinking that of course, they'd need this
| extra capacity. This coincided with the rise of the internet in
| popular use, and a lot of the traffic went to social media.
|
| These main outlets, and their investors, of course, wanted to
| make a profit off of their purchase of these publications. You
| can absolutely run one of those publications in the internet
| era and cover all of the costs, but if you're expecting
| unending/ever-increasing growth in returns every 90 days
| _forever_ , you're going to have a problem. Naturally, that's
| exactly what the investors expected, and instead of just taking
| the haircut, they started to gut their investments.
|
| There are classes of institutions in societies that need to
| exist and can cover their own expenses for the most part. Not
| everything needs to be a unicorn. That's where we screwed
| ourselves on local journalism.
| lurk2 wrote:
| One of my favorite blogs is a curmudgeon from a city I used to
| live in reporting on the gangs there. It's his entire life and
| he's been at it for probably 20 years now.
|
| Even subjects that aren't local interest are usually produced
| at a loss. Forums can often attract subject matter experts who
| discuss issues like this effectively altruistically (vs.
| platforms like YouTube where it almost always a commercial
| interest). The general trend is for these communities to fall
| apart as new users alienate the subject matter experts by being
| uneducated, presumptuous, and impolite (usually in that order).
|
| Given the comparatively lax moderation of Hacker News, I'm
| surprised it has held out as long as it has. It's nowhere near
| as good as it was even five years ago, but it's still one of
| the only online spaces I visit everyday. There are a lot of
| people here (older guys especially) who could be doing anything
| else with their time, but spend at least a portion of it
| providing the discussion that makes this place so interesting
| to visit.
|
| This is a dynamic you also see in education; anyone qualified
| to work as a journalist could probably make more money doing
| something else ("Those who can't do, teach,"), so you select
| for a group that is either incompetent to be reporting on the
| stories they are covering, technically competent but unreliable
| because they grift to subsidize the field's lower earning
| potential, or are technically competent but independently
| wealthy and thus potentially unaware of certain issues.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I suspect there's still some potential for it as a business,
| but people need to work out a new pitch to customers. I don't
| really see anyone trying.
|
| Some newspapers are still resisting the internet it seems. My
| parents tried getting an online only subscription to a paper,
| and were told no, they had to take Sunday delivery. Someone is
| still paying for those printed Sunday ads.
| cyberax wrote:
| We can't support full newspapers, with multiple editorial
| staff, printing presses, daily deliveries, etc.
|
| But blog-style pages that report news from local council
| meetings? This is definitely within reach. Perhaps with a
| podcast channel on Youtube.
|
| Local governance is the most important level for the democracy.
| It sounds weird, but it's absolutely crucial:
|
| 1. You can personally see the effects of decisions made.
|
| 2. They affect your daily life.
|
| 3. You can see that democracy _works_.
|
| 4. It's a good training ground for people with ambitions for
| higher-level elections.
| rsolva wrote:
| Centralisation generally leads to efficiency, but when pushed to
| far it will corrode core human values.
|
| Democratic processes will always have to contend with the
| messiness of humans, and we have to find a balance. Currently I
| feel the consolidations in many aspect of modern society has been
| pushed to far. If we keep pushing, we end up in an authoritarian
| or fascistic state with no wiggle room for the squishy
| humannesses that is the pesky, but unavoidable ingredient in a
| vibrant and free democratic society.
| retrocog wrote:
| This is a topic close to my heart and I've been working with a
| small team on a solution for a few years and its finally
| launching into beta now. Hope it works out. If not, back to the
| drawing board!
| eufouria wrote:
| Link?
| slfreference wrote:
| I think we can safely the problem isn't lack of information at
| the local or national level. The problem is nobody is taking
| action on it when informed. It takes only 1 person to report a
| problem but the responsibility to take action is swallowed by the
| void, noise and we the people are helpless.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43877301
| hunglee2 wrote:
| a geofenced, location verified X-type product would be a good way
| to bring back local journalism. Users can read, but only have
| write access if they are within a specific geofence. This would
| diffuse 'reporting' across the local community - we would have
| actual citizen reporters which Musk pretends is the case on X -
| and increase trust that what is happening is actually happening.
| Tried to build this a decade ago but tech wasn't there. Maybe
| time has come now?
| retrocog wrote:
| 100% and yes, now the time has come for sure.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| somebody go build it!
| olivia-banks wrote:
| How does this differ from services like NextDoor? I'm not
| familiar with it but it sounds similar.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| never been on Nextdoor but probably similar. Perhaps purpose
| would be the main difference - Nextdoor is residential and
| problem orientated, whilst our idea (we actually had it to
| MVP) was more like foursquare meets old twitter - basically
| verified local recommendations, news, updates from folks who
| were actually local to the area, rather than transients who
| know little. Our attempt then the limit the transients to
| read only translates really well today to online trolls /
| bots etc
| khelavastr wrote:
| "Unless the journalism is too critical, then they're far-
| right/far-left agitators"
| dfajgljsldkjag wrote:
| Did anyone read the article? This is obvious AI Slop. A million
| em dashes and tons of other chatgpt-isms are all over. This isn't
| journalism - it's nonsense.
|
| This is a "reader" submitted article and not written by the staff
| at the paper. I'm surprised they didn't give it more due
| diligence though.
| tyjen wrote:
| It's rare to find local newspapers owned locally, and even rarer
| to find a local newspaper that's a fair representation of the
| local population instead of an insulated clique with heavy handed
| control over what's represented.
|
| Local online forums dedicated to a locality produce more
| representative content and everyone can participate as long as
| their isn't a similar controlling clique in charge of moderation.
| See /r/Seattle and /r/SeattleWA for how moderation manipulates
| outcomes. Both perspectives are important, but each clique tends
| to omit what others deem important; leading to topic over-
| representation/under-representation problems.
|
| There's clearly a loss on long forum informational pieces, but
| your community is misinformed or misrepresented if those pieces
| only support the motives of the clique.
| quasse wrote:
| Seattle actually happens to have some absolutely great examples
| of local journalism as well as some extremely bad examples of
| corporate owned "news" factories.
|
| https://westseattleblog.com/ is run by a single person
| (formerly a husband and wife team) and she attends huge numbers
| of local events and city meetings providing hyper-local
| coverage on things that are happening in the area.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Further reading on this, very worthwhile IMHO: Paper Girl by Beth
| Macy, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Girl
| daveaiello wrote:
| As someone who lives in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania that Stu
| Faigen calls home, I say that half of the county, which is about
| 325,000 people, should agree but will disagree because of how
| strident his politics generally are in favor of politicians and
| causes from one side of the aisle.
|
| I say "his politics" but I mean his and those of the other
| contributors and staff of the Bucks County Beacon. It is a who's
| who of radical-left Bucks County politics.
|
| You can't look at the decline in journalism in our country
| without looking at how one-sided the coverage provided by the
| journalists has been for the last 40 or 50 years.
|
| If journalists had taken a neutral political position and called
| out wrong doing equally, they'd have at least 2x the paying
| subscriber base now.
|
| Who knows how that would have affected the secular decline to
| this point?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| This breaks down when one half of a two party system goes all-
| in on lying.
|
| Reality has a left wing bias because reality is fact-based.
|
| To take a "neutral" political position in this environment is
| to accept blatant lies. Journalism should be a pursuit of
| truthful information, thus being "neutral' politically is
| untenable if you want to do actual journalism.
|
| It's true that might not always be the best for your subscriber
| numbers. But some folks do, actually, care about the truth.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I don't think the OP is saying he has an issue with the
| reporting of facts. I think what he's getting at is that a
| lot of what passes for news today (especially online) are
| really just op-eds.
|
| Presenting just the facts _is_ being politically neutral, but
| only when it 's _just_ the facts. Providing commentary on the
| facts is not. I don 't think it's all that crazy to say
| there's been an obvious left-leaning bias in that regard for
| the last 10-20 years.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Congratulations, you've bought into the fascists' framing.
|
| Whenever the media doesn't present the fascists' narrative
| unchallenged, it's declared that they're being biased.
| Doesn't matter what the facts are, the accusations still
| come.
| thunderfork wrote:
| One of the greatest failings of journalism over the last bunch
| of decades has been that it takes too much of a neutral (or
| capital-oriented) position. You can follow this from the scores
| of puff pieces on the Vietnam War being, like, totally under
| control, dude, straight through to the modern endless refrain
| of "well, Steve says the Earth is round and Bob says the Earth
| is flat, but it's up to you to decide :)". Incuriosity and
| hypercredulity of access-journalists saving up trivia for their
| book deals, all with the "noble" goal of appearing "neutral" -
| it's been the death spiral of Western democracy.
| daveaiello wrote:
| Perhaps my choice of the phrase "neutral political position"
| was not what others would have chosen.
|
| I am trying to take a fact-based perspective in what I say
| and do.
|
| Facts don't belong to either dominant political party in the
| United States.
| bpt3 wrote:
| The person you are responding to doesn't acknowledge that
| the Democratic Party represents the left wing in US
| politics, presumably because they aren't beholden to the
| small far left portion of its constituents.
|
| I wouldn't spend time trying to justify your stance to him,
| which is a very reasonable one IMO.
| throwaway21856 wrote:
| How else would you suggest communicating to a population that
| fundamentally does not share your views, other than with
| neutrality?
|
| As a Bucks County native, the Beacon is not at all
| representative of the median voter. Oh, certainly there are
| some aligned with it, but there are just as many with the
| opposite views, and most are in between. Journalists that
| don't respect those people in the middle, that disagreement,
| have no chance of being listened to by them. They have every
| right to voice their opinions, but if journalists only
| respect the people who already agree with them, then we're
| all just going to stay in our bubbles.
| bpt3 wrote:
| > If journalists had taken a neutral political position and
| called out wrong doing equally, they'd have at least 2x the
| paying subscriber base now.
|
| Or they'd have no paying subscriber base because everyone is
| pissed off at them.
|
| I prefer sources that just report on local happenings
| (including the activities of our local government) and am
| fortunate to have at least one that is non-partisan, but I
| don't think their success is assured, especially in an area
| that leans far in one specific direction.
| throwaway21856 wrote:
| In this case, the area in question very much does not lean in
| one specific direction. Which makes it unclear what
| journalists that do lean far in one direction are trying to
| accomplish in such an area.
| bpt3 wrote:
| They are pandering to the portion of the population that
| does lean in a specific direction and wants to participate
| in an echo chamber, which seems like it should be a tiny
| number of people to me but organizations like Fox News (and
| all the knockoffs that sprung up to reach people who feel
| like Fox News is too "fair and balanced") continue to prove
| me wrong.
|
| Given what I said above, my point was that a significant
| portion of the local population will remember the negative
| articles about their side from that outlet and avoid it,
| leaving them with the depressingly small number of people
| who either don't consider themselves to be aligned with
| either party or actually want to read unbiased reporting.
|
| In addition to just writing about what they believe
| personally, the business case is that you can capture more
| subscribers pandering to one side than you can pandering to
| no one.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Local journalism is important but I am not really sure how to fix
| it. Lets say we make a big fund to pay for "independent
| journalism" at the local level. That only works for so long until
| people get inside with their own axe to grind and take control.
| The activist class will eventually get in, become managers and
| corrupt the organization if its a non-profit. If its a political
| organization it will have political pressures. If it is a for
| profit it will have financial incentives that probably cant
| survive in the modern day in small markets.
| thunderfork wrote:
| There's no such thing as an "activist class", just people with
| opinions. But people with opinions are enough to kill good
| journalism if they can't keep them in their pants.
| Okawari wrote:
| I think that supporting a wide spread of newspaper on the local
| level will alleviate all these issues in aggregate. This is
| what we do in Norway and I think it works quite well to be
| honest. My municipality of around 250k inhabitants has 4
| newspapers that I am aware of, none of which feels very overtly
| influenced by activists nor political or financial pressures.
|
| There are quite a few newspapers who are political and receive
| subsidies, but overall I think our system works quite well at
| providing high quality local reporting at affordable prices.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| So the big issue with the entire business model of journalism is
| it's just too easy to buy influence.
|
| Jeff Bezos has already reaped many multiples of his investment in
| the Washington Post.
|
| For more or less a nominal amount of money to him He's able to
| shape much of our public discourse.
|
| I suspect a volunteer non profit news organization could emerge.
| But even then, how many skilled journalists are going to be able
| to work a "real" job too.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > volunteer non profit news organization [...] skilled
| journalists
|
| This _could_ maybe be done with retirees or those who are
| mostly financially independent, as well as those who want to
| help run the nonprofit.
|
| The problem is that in the current climate, it is harder both
| to retire and to become financially independent.
|
| If you want the labor of skilled journalists beyond a trickle
| of content from the ivory tower type, you either need to set up
| an intentional community or simply pay people enough to live
| on. I don't see any clear shortcuts. Quality output requires
| sufficient energy inputs.
| Aunche wrote:
| > Jeff Bezos has already reaped many multiples of his
| investment in the Washington Post.
|
| Has he though? The Washington Post has actually been a leader
| in primary reporting in Amazon's union busting activities [1].
| He may have pressured them to not endorse Kamala Harris, but he
| likely would have better standing with Trump had he had never
| bought the Post in the first place.
|
| For all the shit that mainstream media gets, much of which is
| deserved, alternative media is order of magnitudes worse with
| regards to manipulating public discourse.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/09/amazon-...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Controlled opposition is great.
|
| I don't think the Washington Post really would of made a
| difference in terms of the election, but I have no faith in
| them having any editorial independence.
|
| My boss also lets me criticize parts of the business, but
| he's still my boss
| Aunche wrote:
| Can you tell me what exactly about the Washington Post
| differs from any other center left American news source and
| how those differences benefits Bezos?
| Zaskoda wrote:
| I once interviewed for a tech job at the Seattle times. I didn't
| land the job, but the interview was enlightening. I was told that
| the investigative reporters at the newspaper did all of the
| "work" of uncovering news. Subsequently, the TV broadcast station
| would just report on what the newspaper found. Meanwhile, the
| broadcast news was raking in tons more ad revenue than the
| newspaper.
|
| Ever since then, I've often brainstormed of ways to remove all of
| the layers between the actual investigative reporter and the
| general public looking for a way to get as much of the revenue
| directly from the public into the hands of those doing to
| investigations and reports.
|
| I've had ideas though nothing revolutionary enough to share here.
| Still, I think the overall goal would be good for literally
| everyone.
| veep_in_general wrote:
| Yeah thats interesting. I wonder what a solution would look
| like for this. Would legislating a 'finders fee' be the right
| approach for whoever news source was breaking the topic?
| whammybammybo wrote:
| I would love to read some of the ideas you have (even if they
| aren't fleshed out). Maybe a blog post or something?
| tptacek wrote:
| In my local, extremely progressive community, Facebook Groups are
| about 20x more important to democracy than local journalism,
| which residents genuflect to but provides less value than a
| replacement-level blog. I love journalism and stick up for it
| here all the time, but this platitude about local journalism has
| never rung true to me.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Meanwhile, Zuckerberg continues to embrace the current
| administration.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're plausibly one of the 10 most progressive munis in the
| country (we are _the_ most progressive in Chicagoland, which
| should put us easily in the running nationwide), and this
| argument has zero (0) suction here, which means it presumably
| has zero suction anywhere.
| phil21 wrote:
| I'm guessing I know the local newspaper/newsletter you speak
| about being in Chicago. I was a very early supporter of them
| when they started up, but canceled a couple years back when it
| was clear they care far less about reporting and more about
| pushing personal beliefs and vendettas. To the point of
| outright destroying local businesses over petty ideological
| driven things.
|
| I still think they do good work here and there, but their
| editorial standard is such that when faced with evidence of a
| reporter ignoring facts their response was to double down much
| less post a retraction. A conversation with one reporter I had
| basically summarized to "we will report what we want to how we
| want to, it's our organization and we don't get paid enough to
| be objective". Fair enough, I suppose.
|
| At that point random people with a blog is better since at
| least there is not an aura of neutral fact-based journalism
| behind it.
|
| Unfortunately I refuse to participate in the Facebook ecosystem
| so I can't comment on if Facebook Groups is a suitable
| replacement for knowing the general happenings in my
| neighborhood and city. I've made an attempt to get more
| involved with local meetings and events the alderman holds,
| etc. but it seems far too little to keep up on anything in a
| major way.
| tptacek wrote:
| Our local newspaper is the Wednesday Journal. I don't know
| that I'd call it petty so much as a status-quo amplifier
| staffed with people who aren't really engaged with what's
| going on here.
|
| I understand people's distaste with Meta, but at least where
| I live, if you're avoiding Meta, you're avoiding basically
| all the important civic discourse. I poasted my way to
| getting a law passed... on Facebook Groups.
| phil21 wrote:
| Ah, I was talking about Blockclub Chicago.
|
| I am on the fence with Meta. I recognize that I am missing
| out - and I rely on my wife far too much to keep me in the
| loop on things, but she has her own interests so I miss 90%
| of the stuff I would likely care about to be engaged with.
| Or I find out too late.
|
| After 20 years of avoiding a Facebook account though, it's
| a large ask. I'd also love to use Marketplace to give away
| a bunch of stuff that is fairly esoteric (too unique for
| the scrappers to know what to do with) but not worth my
| time to sell on eBay.
|
| Either way it's something I need to get around to doing. I
| went to my first neighborhood association meeting the other
| month to start to get my face known, and it was Community
| (the TV show) levels of insanity. The amount of anti-
| development people I never knew existed are crazy. Stuff
| like do not build a 5 story apartment building 2 blocks
| from an El stop (currently a strip mall) because it might
| ruin the view of the downtown skyline from a bike path
| bridge.
| idatum wrote:
| > Unfortunately I refuse to participate in the Facebook
| ecosystem so I can't comment on if Facebook Groups is a
| suitable replacement
|
| I really resent having FB pushed on me. I don't have an
| account and don't plan to, even if it's to be a member of one
| FB group. My HOA tried that and I pushed back hard. There are
| many other options over FB. We just use email.
| palmotea wrote:
| Facebook Groups are garbage, but everything is in such a
| degraded state that they might look OK in 2026.
|
| What's really needed is journalism done by professionals who
| are paid like professionals. That's a 100x better than any
| Facebook Group.
| tptacek wrote:
| Oh, Groups sucks ass. I dream of figuring out a way to move
| the discourse even just to Reddit. But people talking to each
| other and keeping each other up to date on what's happening,
| with electeds and staff participating, and with decent
| moderation is going to trounce anything professional
| journalists can accomplish in this setting.
|
| That's _not_ true of regional and national journalism. We
| need someone doing that work in Springfield, the state
| capital. We 'd all be better off if we pooled the money that
| was going to suburban local newspapers and sent it there.
| cobber2005 wrote:
| In addition to local journalism, cooperatives are another way
| democracy can show up close to home. Combining the two, I believe
| 404Media.co is effectively a journalist-owned outlet (i.e. a
| worker coop).
| spmartin823 wrote:
| The death of local journalism is fundamentally a revenue problem.
| My cofounder and I have been working for the last year to find
| new revenue streams for newspapers at
| https://seward.presspass.ai/.
|
| Our current hypothesis is that local rewards programs could be a
| sustainable revenue stream and give the newspaper a way to prove
| their advertising works with locals.
|
| While trying this out, we've also helped a few papers get up and
| running - we're calling it "newspaper in a box". Check out a few
| of the papers we've helped launch: https://sewardfolly.com/ (9
| months old) https://homerindependentpress.com/ (2 weeks old).
| venndeezl wrote:
| I really don't understand this pathetic grovel and prostrate at
| the feet of the rich, thing.
|
| Why are the masses, the majority, obliged to kiss ass and suck
| up to what, a half million politicians, a million cops, and
| 1%ers?
|
| Why do you see others as court jesters that must dance for
| modern equivalent of barons and baronesses?
|
| What an antiquated and childish cult behavior.
| j45 wrote:
| There are crowd and community funded models doing hyperlocal
| journalism sustainably.
| spmartin823 wrote:
| Can you give some examples?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Small team does local journalism, motivated locals donate
| to keep it running. It's that simple. Some people are happy
| to donate $20 a month to their favorite Twitch streamer or
| open source project, and other people are happy to do the
| same for their local newspaper.
|
| The failed model is trying to run it like a journalism
| factory: producing articles at some marginal cost and
| selling them at a fixed price that exceeds marginal cost.
|
| Just look at NPR and member stations. The federal
| government ended their funding, but they kept right on
| going because of donations.
| spmartin823 wrote:
| NPR member stations in many communities have _not_ made
| up lost federal funding through donations, in fact many
| are at risk of closing: https://www.adn.com/alaska-
| news/rural-alaska/2025/07/22/kotz...
|
| Donations are definitely a piece of the puzzle but local
| journalism will never reach the level it was in the early
| 2000s without a new revenue stream.
| j45 wrote:
| I thought about the best way to share it and realized it
| might vary in different countries and regions.
|
| As a general introduction to hyperlocal journalism:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=hyperlocal+journalism
|
| From here you can see there's various references and entry
| points to hyperlocal journalism in the US, Canada, etc, all
| working to fill the void of local newspapers departing, or
| local newspapers increasingly only providing national or
| state level news.
|
| Instead of ads alone, its a sponsorship model, one from the
| readers side (optional), and one from the local
| organizations who are outright sponsoring the local news to
| be created, maybe in different categories, etc.
| rsanek wrote:
| Here's a couple concrete examples I found. It seems like
| most have to rely on multiple revenue streams for it to
| work -- something like 1/3 reader revenue (membership), 1/3
| grants/philanthropy, 1/3 earned income (events,
| merchandise, etc).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bristol_Cable
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ferret_(website)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Bureau
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Correspondent
| bkettle wrote:
| Are you based in Alaska? I'd love to hear more if so; I have
| contact info on my website. (I grew up there).
| rendall wrote:
| On the contrary, I think we are entering a new golden age of
| local journalism in the US, but it does not look like the old
| one, so we do not recognize it yet.
|
| What is collapsing is the legacy institutional model. What is
| emerging is a procedural one: individuals showing up locally,
| documenting power directly, publishing primary evidence, and
| forcing accountability through visibility rather than prestige.
|
| Projects like Honor Your Oath, Long Island Audit, Guerilla Media,
| and even single-person operations with a camera and FOIA literacy
| are doing real journalism. They attend meetings, record
| encounters, publish receipts, and focus on consequences that are
| immediate and specific.
|
| The cost of presence is now low. The cost of obscurity for local
| officials is higher. Credibility increasingly comes from raw
| evidence rather than narrative authority. These outlets are not
| trying to inform everyone. They are informing the people affected
| directly.
|
| It feels messy, personal, and sometimes abrasive because it is
| not professionalized in the old sense. Historically, that is what
| journalism looked like before it was institutionalized.
|
| For example, Jeff Gray quietly stands in public with a "God Bless
| Homeless Vets" sign. People often assume he is homeless and
| attempt to violate his rights, frequently including police
| officers. The resulting interactions, all on camera, expose how
| poorly basic constitutional rights are understood or respected at
| the local level. https://youtu.be/-um41lMH3c4
|
| Ronald Durbin of Guerilla Media is a muckraker in the classic
| sense, repeatedly confronting local power structures in person.
| He recently had a gun drawn on him at a town council meeting.
| https://youtube.com/@guerrillapublishing
|
| Sean Reyes from Long Island Audit has been arrested multiple
| times for filming inside police station lobbies despite clear New
| York law allowing it, and has been physically attacked and had
| firearms brandished at him while attempting interviews, all
| documented on video. https://youtube.com/@longislandaudit
|
| There are so many others. This is what local journalism looks
| like now.
|
| https://youtube.com/@lacklustermedia
|
| https://youtube.com/@audittheaudit
|
| https://youtube.com/@amagansettpress
|
| https://youtube.com/@susanbassi
|
| Many, many others.
|
| Here are lawyers giving their perspectives on these interactions:
|
| https://youtube.com/@southerndrawllaw
|
| https://youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer
|
| https://youtube.com/@americasattorney
|
| https://youtube.com/@legalbytesmedia
| j45 wrote:
| If local journalism doesn't exist in your town or city, start it.
| markstos wrote:
| They had a solid podcast interview with journalist Jordan Green
| on the raise of far-right extremism in the US.
|
| https://buckscountybeacon.com/2025/08/journalist-jordan-gree...
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| ...and the more government is local, the more local journalism
| means a damn thing.
| misterbishop wrote:
| Liberal values can't be preserved in the midst of a Pharaonic
| distribution of wealth. The only way to defend liberal values is
| to fight for socialism.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| There's this idea that Democracy and Journalism are intrinsically
| linked (thanks John Milton), but they're not. Look at the history
| of Democracy (by that of course we mean representative
| democracy): it has existed long before, and independent from,
| Journalism. Then look at the history of Journalism: it has always
| been a partisan affair, funded, written, and published by people
| who want to get their own point across. The idea that truth
| emerges from freedom of speech ignores the fact that the speaker
| can lie, or that different people view different things as true.
|
| The romantic idea of Journalism as a bastion of Democracy
| conveniently ignores the facts. Democracy is a form of
| Government, and Government is power exerted _on_ people. You don
| 't get more power or influence because you heard about a thing
| happening. And most people will never do anything about what they
| hear. The real purpose of Journalism is to galvanize the public's
| feelings based on a selective viewpoint towards a specific aim.
| An article is written, using selective information, presented in
| a particular way, in order to effect a change the writer wants.
| If effective, the writer gets what they want, or something close
| to it.
|
| Journalism is just another form of power. But it's not power _of_
| the people. It 's power _using_ the people. You and the rest of
| the people have no power of your own. But as a group, the people
| are wielded by institutions (Journalism, Religion, Party,
| Industry, Culture, etc) to act on behalf of those institutions.
| The group can try to push back on power. But without
| organization, leadership, clear goals, and strong motivation,
| there 's no effective opposition. So occasionally the group will
| take on these qualities, and becomes... another institution,
| wielding power to get its way. And as a group with power, the
| results are not always positive for everyone (see: Anti-Saloon
| League, National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, etc)
| testing22321 wrote:
| Except then all the local news stations are owned by mega corps
| and this happens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
| hirpslop wrote:
| As part of a research project, I combed through archives of my
| local paper from the 70s and 80s. As a practice exercise, I
| highly recommend you log in to your local library and try
| exploring yours. I was stunned at the quality papers used to
| produce. It left me with a profound sense of loss and regret, but
| also hope that we can do better.
|
| Even the most trivial seeming stories were treated with a care
| that seems lost to time.
|
| The power of observation beats most content I encounter now. For
| instance, the coverage of a Lieutenant Governor's election
| victory celebration after being snubbed by Gov. Reagan's
| inaugural party. The clever politician persevered because he knew
| the way to people's hearts: free steins of beer and brats.
| Thousands attended on a chilly winter night in a parking garage.
|
| They even followed up to verify precisely how much beer and brats
| were consumed.
|
| They were also funnier and better written that most journalistic
| writing see today. Local restaurant reviews had a sense of
| responsibility and respectful conduct, but didn't shy away from
| levity when the food stank. Far from a mere aggregate of gripes
| of the crankiest customers or sycophantic pablum, it was a the
| product of someone who'd honed their craft--taking pains to
| represent what was there according to a professional ethic.
|
| This amounts to a public record that's a dependable source of
| historical truth in a way that a forum or social platform doesn't
| approximate.
|
| They may not be as good today, but $200 a year is arguably worth
| the democracy protecting function alone.
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