[roymurdock]

I'm not sure what political angles the economist has played to historically, but I find it fascinating how the death of paid-for content is spurring a decline in the quality and scope of news across the board - especially at once-respectable establishments.

When your revenue is driven by ads, which are driven by views, you are incentivized to publish inflammatory articles that play to mass-approved tropes, such as "burn the 1%" and "the police are all evil/out of control". Not to say that these pieces are unmerited, but I've observed their quantity and quality to be moving in opposite directions.

I think Bloomberg Businessweek is killing it right now. They've onboarded some of the best talent (Paul Ford, Matt Levine) and revamped the style of their publication to appeal to the young, ADD, super-exuberant tech/finance crowd (myself included). I believe they are heavily subsidized by Bloomberg's other business ventures, so this seems to be a more viable way to fund and disseminate high quality content.

[kbenson]

> I believe they are heavily subsidized by Bloomberg's other business ventures, so this seems to be a more viable way to fund and disseminate high quality content.

How are those incentives less perverse than those engendered by current funding models? I don't imagine reporting on stories that show those other business ventures ina negative light may not been seen favorably at some level of management.

[roymurdock]

I see it as the patron model, where a wealthy individual bankrolls an artist to do basically whatever the artist pleases as long as the artist paints a nice picture of the patron every once in a while.

Of course, I have no idea how closely the other branches of Bloomberg's empire tie into BusinessWeek, but from many of the articles I have read, I get the feeling that Bloomberg LP is holding off on pushing some annoying agenda until they absorb enough market share from The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, etc.

[littletimmy]

One could easily argue that given revenue is driven by ads, it is a corporate agenda that will be enforced upon people and people will be nudged towards that.