|
> Actual reporters need to be paid :) The idea of free access to news is relatively recent, since wide-spread web access. Prior to that, people paid for subscriptions, or bought papers at new stands or from boxes. True for physical media, aka paper news, but not so much for radio and tv. The internet didn't invent anything new here in giving free access to news, it just provides a written form in addition to video and audio forms. > I think it's becoming increasingly clear that purely ad-based publishing is encouraging an increase in yellow journalism. That is true but that form of mediocre journalism can coexist with alternatives. In France we still have paper news that does not depend on ads at all, and that have healthy revenue, like Le Canard Enchaine. Just because mediocre journalism can be accessed for free on the internet does not mean paper news has to die. Le Canard is one of the most profitable newspaper in France, despite requiring a subscription and having zero ads (None, at all, ever. A great tradition they've always maintained). They also have heavy restrictions on their employees for the sake of objective journalism : they cannot play with the stock market nor can they accept gifts or official honors.
Just the fact that they don't have any ads at all in their newspaper sets quite a different standard from things like the NYT or WSJ.
Those two keep begging for subscribers, but even if you buy their actual paper news, you still have to suffer their ads and wonder how much ad revenue can influence them. Maybe it would be more acceptable and they would gain more subscribers if they became subscriber only in exchange for removing all ads and not depending on ad revenue anymore? As a French Le Canard has proven to me and the rest of us that a newspaper can live without ads at all so I feel a lot less willing to pay for forms of news that compromise with advertisers and pollute our minds. There is also in France, and accessible through the internet, the availability of state owned media, which is free for the poor segment of the population, and lives through a mandatory tax on the rest. It isn't quite as good as Le Canard, but still a lot higher quality than the average privately owned news. They have written form of news on websites like francetvinfo, radio, tv channels and so on. I'm particularly fond of the tv magazine Envoye Special and its in depth coverage of specific, selected topics during its airings. |