upvote
> Do people want actual journalism to go out of business?

Former Google Contributor user reporting in! I absolutely do not want normal journalism going out of business, but I’m not going to subscribe to Bloomberg or FT or any of those sites on a recurring basis for one article. I love the idea of paying a non-subscription for one thing, occasionally, though!

reply
Yes, I also liked the crowdfunding model that the defunct YC startup Beacon Reader proposed. It’s too bad they didn’t make it.
reply
I'd be more than happy to pay for the day's paper when I want to read it, assuming it is just that, I pay for a particular day's paper and I get access to the whole paper without having to subscribe, register, or give up my personal information. If I could buy a paper online the same way I could in a 7-11, I absolutely would.
reply
They have made a bed to lie in. Kagi is worth paying for; the vast majority of news sides are targeted at people who don't think critically, and serve a narrow-scope of corporate narratives.

I love high-quality journalism (Mainstream sources of the past; a few current gems like Quanta and PBS; you can find other exceptions). I have explicitly bumped the priority of the high-quality sources in search, and blocked or subdued some of the low quality ones which come up frequently.

reply
Paywalling all content sucks, it just makes me leave the website. I pay for a news website from my country that gives me extra cool stuff like opinion articles and cultural highlights from my city, not because they paywall the basic news.
reply
Somebody’s got to be paid to write the basic news articles. Maybe we could have a government funded “basic news” (although there are obvious concerns that that might turn into a propaganda service).
reply
They do get paid, they are employees and get a salary. I pay for the premium plan and that funds the company.
reply
Didn't journalism go out of business decades ago and now not even pretends to be journalism anymore? I feel it has gotten so bad that most younger people alive today do not even realize what journalism is supposed to be: only report the facts, never add your own opinion to the facts, if there is more than one side, ask each side and report what each side has to say without omitting or adding anything. These are just some super basic features of journalism that do not seem to exist anywhere anymore.
reply
>Didn't journalism go out of business decades ago and now not even pretends to be journalism anymore?

it seems rarer, for sure. perhaps the quantity of good journalism is the same but there's a lot more trash to sift through?

but i wouldnt say it went out of business or anything. there's some fantastic journalists out there still.

reply
I think that sort of journalism has largely been purged from the traditional sources and has ended up on Substack, or their own site. It's transitioned from "I can trust Brand X" to "I can trust that individual because of their track record and the way they reliably report things that don't align with their own world view", etc. Glenn Greenwald is an example. The story around why he had to depart The Intercept (which he helped found!) is everything that's wrong with modern journalism that has pushed people like Glenn to places like Substack.

Bringing it back to paywalls and Kagi and paying for content, Glenn has 3 kids and I think a bunch of dogs and they all need to eat.

reply
> Didn't journalism go out of business decades ago and now not even pretends to be journalism anymore?

So Daily Mail, Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, FOX and many others all went out of business decades ago?

That is breaking news to me.

reply
the parent's argument is that those companies don't really do journalism anymore, not the the companies themselves went out of business. they are more like entertainment networks.

and, for at least some of the ones you listed, i would have to agree that the bar for what they call "journalism" is not very high, and the concept of journalistic integrity appears to be a pretty low priority.

reply