[pemulis]

I majored in creative writing, but the MFA career path looked like a pyramid scheme, so I switched to web development. After working in the field for several years, I started running the technical side of a local leaks platform called BayLeaks. (It's defunct now, but was cutting edge at the time, basically the third SecureDrop instance after The New Yorker and Wired.) I got more involved in the research and writing side, since it turned out the big problem in journalism wasn't a lack of technology, it was a lack of time and money to do research.

Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting. It was hugely rewarding at a personal level and made a positive impact on people's lives, but it was also a financial catastrophe that I'm still paying for. I could no longer justify as I was approaching my 30s and planning to get married.

I switched back to programming, eventually landed my current full-time job doing blockchain stuff, and really enjoy it. I miss investigative reporting, but still do a bit of research for activist friends in my free time. Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write. Given the dire economics of journalism, making a bunch of tech money to subsidize a publication would be more impactful than slogging away in poverty on my own.

There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency. I think that tax dollars should be set aside to fund journalism, since journalism ultimately saves money for everyone. I don't see any other big solutions that would solve this systemic problem. We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.

[Animats]

We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.

What makes you think the rich have better info? Most people with money read the Economist, which has real reporters, but anybody can get that. There's the Bloomberg terminal, but that just gets you news before it hits Bloomberg Business Week. "Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg terminal".

There are expensive newsletters which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. They're devoted to very narrow subjects. If you really need to know what's going in in offshore scams, get Offshore Alert. For oil, there's Platt's, which is now part of S&P. For ports, there's the Journal of Commerce. For security issues, Kroll has some expensive info services, but they're mostly repackaged content from elsewhere. There's the good old Dines Letter from James Dines, the senior gold bug. (Dines is always saying "the sky is falling in this specific area", and he's often right.) And there's Hulbert Financial Digest, which rates all the other newsletters.

It's more about knowing where to look. It takes some money, but not a whole lot.

You can pay financial advisers, but as a group, after fees, they underperform index funds.

[Mirioron]

On the other hand, there are too many activist journalists. People whose main goal is not to report the news but to push a political or social agenda. I particularly despise the ones that do smear attacks. I've been burned too many times by trusting these "journalists" that if a stranger tells me they're a journalist then I trust them less than I did before knowing that.

The risk with the government paying the media is that the media stops being independent from the government. Some of that media is basically going to be propaganda for the government that's funded by taxpayers. But, if journalists were paid by taxes then perhaps we would get less clickbait. I'm not sure how it would affect activist journalism though. I'm afraid it might even increase it.

[thekodols]

>There's a lot of evidence that the costs of government go up as local journalism recedes, because there is no one to objectively report on waste, corruption, and inefficiency.

Never considered it, but it seems to make a lot of sense. Would you mind pointing me to the evidence about this you mentioned?

[pemulis]

Here's the study I was thinking about.

"Local newspapers hold their governments accountable. We examine the effect of local newspaper closures on public finance for local governments. Following a newspaper closure, we find municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis points in the long run. Identification tests illustrate that these results are not being driven by deteriorating local economic conditions. The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is associated with increased government inefficiencies, including higher likelihoods of costly advance refundings and negotiated issues, and higher government wages, employees, and tax revenues."

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Murphy-...

[alexkavon]

> We're moving to a state where only the rich can afford good information and everyone else is in the dark.

Please explain this dramatic conclusion more.

[pemulis]

The first newspapers were expensive niche publications that provided businesspeople, politicians, and other elites with the information they needed. Mass market newspapers (and ultimately the mass market news industry) relied on advertising dollars to subsidize the costs of news production. With advertising dollars moving away from news production, there is no longer enough incentive to produce news for the average person. There has to be some subsidy in place to pay for news that regular people can't pay for. This is particularly bad in local markets, where news deserts are spreading. Without beat reporters, there's no way to know basic facts about what's going on around you.

https://www.cjr.org/local_news/american-news-deserts-donuts-...

Mass market news allowed for the professionalization of journalism, with a set of ethics that demanded (attempts at) objectivity. With mass market news dying, there isn't enough money to support a large professional journalism class. In its absence, we are left with propagandists that publish publicly for free or at discounted rates and consultants that publish objective information privately at high rates that only businesses, politicians, or the wealthy can afford.

[stefkors]

What you are forgetting is that advertising is moving away because readers are. People came for the value they are no longer getting. Advertisers are just the result of that

[mschuster91]

> Please explain this dramatic conclusion more.

Not OP but I'll try: have you ever looked at the massive consolidations that happen in the news space? A couple of truly independent but small papers and public TV/radio stations remain, but the rest? Owned by Murdoch, Sinclair, Axel Springer and a couple other billionaires.

Coincidentally or not, Murdoch/Sinclair/Springer media massively lean towards the right/hardcore conservative edge, which basically means that the population is fed a heavy bias in news (and some programs don't even deserve that name anymore, they're outright propaganda). And these media conglomerates are those defining current politics, simply because of their massive reach capability.

Media needs to be broken up if democracy is to survive - and similar with entertainment, given that Disney basically owns all major movie franchises now.

[toasterlovin]

You have conveniently neglected to mention all the news outlets with obvious left wing leanings, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, The Atlantic, Vice, Vox, etc. The media landscape is actually pretty well balanced, which isn’t surprising, given that the population’s political orientation is also pretty well balanced.

[mschuster91]

That's the point: they have left leanings. None of them is advocating full blown socialism, goes for gun bans, or a single-payer healthcare system with private insurance middlemen cut out of the picture.

The so-called "conservative" media however? Just look at how they portrait immigrants, that's no longer just leanings, that's propaganda.

In addition, for Germany the hardcore-conservative BILD paper (owned by Axel Springer) is still the most powerful paper given its circulation of 1.4M daily. The centrist-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung follows wide after the BILD at 338k daily, followed by conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine with 241k [1]. By reach, the right/"conservatives" massively dominate.

[1]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/73448/umfrage...

[toasterlovin]

I’m not German, so I can’t speak to the German media landscape. I’m American, though, and to portray the media landscape in the US as right dominated is insane. Literally every single prestigious media and cultural institution is dominated by the left in this country. Insane views on the right regularly get deplatformed on facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, whereas insane left wing views are ignored. Left wing causes have a chorus of support from famous celebrities, musicians, and actors. Right wing views might have some support from random C-list celebrities or country music stars.

[mschuster91]

> Insane views on the right regularly get deplatformed on facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, whereas insane left wing views are ignored.

Yeah and then do show me please where the "insane left wing" advocates for conspiracy crap such as the "great replacement" or denies the Holocaust. There's a reason the right wings get deplatformed and the left wings don't, simply because the left wings don't devolve to inhumanity.

> Right wing views might have some support from random C-list celebrities or country music stars.

... and from the President of the United States as well as half of Congress. Yeah, "some support". Bannon literally ended up as consultant in the White House.

[cryoshon]

>Eventually I'd like to make enough from my technology work to become the publisher of a small investigative outlet where I could pay other people to research and write.

look me up when you're ready. i've wanted to do something like this for a while, but of course the money aspect is always the sticking point.

[daear]

Individuals funding things like this actually seems like a valid path forward. Look at other industries where the same thing is happening. When appeasing shareholders or advertisers isn't priority one, it's easier to maintain quality and value.

[jomi-g]

>Eventually, I made the switch to full-time freelance investigative reporting.

How does one even get started with freelance investigation?

[pemulis]

BayLeaks partnered with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, before it went under. My co-founder was a long-time San Francisco journalist and I was able to collaborate with her on several stories and get introductions to journalists and editors for stories I was doing independently. But of course, you could always just investigate stuff, find the email of an editor at an outlet that seems to publish that kind of thing, and write an email pitch. If they're interested, you send your story, and they'll tell you how much they would pay to publish with them.

[RealWorldPolice]

Would you explain a bit more clearly what you want to know?

(I can probably answer your question, but as phrased your question is extraordinarily broad and a bit unclear.)