Advertising based funding was always a scam and doomed to be a race to the bottom as per unit margins can barely support unit costs of production. The incentives for attention capture and sale of private information are the only material market pressure.
Sadly in a world of scarcity journalists need to eat too, have families, retirement funds to accumulate, etc. Quality of work requires paying humans, which requires funds from the consumers of the product one way or another. By paying as a first order user you boost the unit margin considerably and change the incentive structure to prioritize your priorities, not the priorities of advertisers and surveillance economy participants.
Sadly I don’t think anyone has come up with an alternative way of paying for the people to do the work.
Here is a (not very novel) idea: Netflix for news. I would happily pay for a solid aggregator subscription. But the number of times that some random news site from halfway across the world is the site of the day just keeps me away from news subscriptions. It feels like I am pigeon-holing myself and limiting my worldview to that of a couple of editorial boards / companies.
Also, for sites that want to have single-site subscriptions: If you bundle with print, give me the option of donating my print subscription to a library if I don't want the hard copy. Many people for whom the subscription is too much friction / not a great value proposition, will bite if at least they know the libraries are eating for free.
Is that really the best model given how it's an open secret that streaming services aren't profitable? Sure, news expenses are much less, but I imagine demand is too.
People who wanted that "news aggegator" have social media (and technically, HN counts here too).
>It feels like I am pigeon-holing myself and limiting my worldview to that of a couple of editorial boards / companies.
I fear this being an inevitability as well when relinquishing curation to a middleman. Your subscribers will influence what news you approve.
Just imagine this 2034, and the NewStream service is competing with a bunch of newspapers selling their own news streams. The original NewStream is hiring reporters to make its own news, and some people like them.
It sometimes seems to me that news organizations are suffering from self-inflicted injuries. They would be much healthier financially with aggregation.
Sadly in a world of scarcity journalists need to eat too, have families, retirement funds to accumulate, etc. Quality of work requires paying humans, which requires funds from the consumers of the product one way or another. By paying as a first order user you boost the unit margin considerably and change the incentive structure to prioritize your priorities, not the priorities of advertisers and surveillance economy participants.
Sadly I don’t think anyone has come up with an alternative way of paying for the people to do the work.