[rwmj]

But don't you think this niche is already filled by bloggers, who are (mostly) working for nothing.

Edit: My blog gets 500-1000 unique readers per day, roughly one post per day, which is now around 0.5% - 1% of the readership of a major newspaper's website.

[andymitchell]

I'm not convinced most bloggers start blogging with the assumption they'll do it for nothing :)

They think fame and riches! Or at least having the intellectual satisfaction of bestowing upon the world their opinion... but without revenue they cannot reach out to an audience, they cannot fund deep investigations, they cannot travel, and nor can they inspire confidence in whatever readership happens to stumble across them.

(The last one probably is solvable with a recommendation/aggregation service for new/independent journalists).

It is of course phenomenally hard to get people to pay for anything on the Web, especially news and opinions. But this is where it's worth drawing a comparison with Diaspora's funding: that $200,000 in donations is remarkable yet understandable, because a certain group of people want to support "big ideas" and freedoms... especially those with a political edge (and nothing is so overtly political as the freedom of the press, in Jefferson's words: "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.").