[kristopolous]

Think about how higher education and journals work... There's lots of criticism of them but if you get, say, a masters in chemistry from let's say Columbia, you aren't going to be learning about alchemy and orgones. We seem to be able to reasonably pull that off as a society.

So I guess look at systems with relatively low bullshit information density and try to follow their lead somehow.

We might have to admit that decently produced news is hard, time-consuming, and kind of expensive.

As for "who's going to pay for it", I reject the premise. Society figures out how to pay for things they value. The first step is to create the things of value and get general society to respond in kind.

The first part is mostly done. The second part needs the work. Most people probably don't know about things like say, quanta magazine or whether it's any good or not.

[osigurdson]

Isn't "getting general society to responding in kind" essentially figuring out "who's going to pay for it"?

[kristopolous]

Indirectly! Yes. That's the point.

We don't ask about who will pay for the new police helicopter or military jet or who will pay for a bank bailout or corporate subsidy.

But if it's in the public interest everyone puts on their reading glasses and pulls out their calculator and red pens.

This is a function of priorities and we need to make sure they're being intentionally set and then the money will flow accordingly.

This should be in the same priority class as food inspection, water sanitation and road repair. That's how important honest well funded news is to a functional democracy. We don't say, complain that the city fixing potholes interferes with the market of private road repair companies.

[osigurdson]

So you are basically advocating for government funding it seems, is that correct?

Do you have any concerns about that?

[kristopolous]

Not necessarily but there's lots of examples if that's the path you want.

BBC, NHK, CBC, PBS, France 24, ... these are all generally regarded as pretty decent. Even AJ+, RT and Al Jazeera has done decent journalism.

We can speculate based on fears or look at existing systems.

Some people gnaw at their fingernails and couch faint whenever "government" is mentioned like it's some masked moustache twirling cartoon villain from a children's show. I hope we can be a bit more reasonable and sober about this. The 101 year old BBC isn't the last thread being unwound from a totalitarian sword of damocles about to befall on an unsuspecting public.

To go back to the previous conversation, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech - all private. There's models that don't involve the government.

Even religious organizations like Christian Science Monitor are decent.

Teen Vogue does decent journalism as well these days, using the funds from their fashion and fluff to do real reporting. (Ex: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/harm-reduction-young-people-...)

Playboy funded some great journalism as well, for instance their 1985 interview with Steve Jobs https://allaboutstevejobs.com/verbatim/interviews/playboy_19... and I quote (again, 1985)

"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."

There's lots of possibilities. The point is to not link the Hayekian homoeconomicus profit machine to the institution of news production. That's what leads to clickbait advalanches

[osigurdson]

>> faint whenever "government" is mentioned

I don't believe the concern is necessarily the case that people fear current governments. The concern is that monotonic consolidation of power will eventually lead to a totalitarian state. Having a single, government funded, news channel is a tenet of any authoritarian state so likely best to avoid. Naturally the only way to have a single source is to have strong censorship laws which only allow government approved information. This is far riskier to democracy than random crack-pot journalists. Though we may have always lived in free countries, it is important to remember that even today the majority of the world's citizens live in non-free countries. Backsliding is possible - it has happened before and could happen again. I'd rather not think about this either but I think it is important to be mindful of the possibility.

>> BBC, NHK, CBC, PBS, France 24

I don't know anything about the others, but the CBC is considered controversial in Canada.

>> Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech - all private

I don't really understand the analogy here. Elite universities are large institutions, but do not exclude smaller ones (good). Wouldn't this essentially be what we have now (New York Times, Washington Post, etc).

[kristopolous]

You actually Are pearl clutching and reaching for the smelling salts.

I have multiple examples but you reach for some wild imagination because of some insane fanaticism of all things government. CBC has won multiple Pulitzers and Peabodies but I guess it's actually some communist menace.

Basically all the top countries in press freedom have a government news source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Ra...

Maybe 2 in the top 30 don't

This isn't productive. Let's end this.