>What they really care about, apparently, if you follow the money, is interactive cartoon porn.

But, according to the link you sent, the global top 100 only has 15 NSFW creators. People seem way more interested in Podcasts and YouTube videos.

Right. Sorry. What people care about is probably something like this ranking:

- podcasts

- YouTube

- porn

- Skyrim mods

- Minecraft mods

- Instagram models

... several other bullet points ....

- journalism

Many of those podcasters and youtubers are better journalists than the writers for Washington Post.

The real issue is the we've forgotten what real journalism looks like. Nobody wants to pay.

I beg to differ. There's just more competition, and the bar for entering is lower. And so you get a lot of chaff. But there are serious journalists with high standards and integrity out there that thrive on the donation model, such as Timcast. Now there's a guy who actually meets up where it happens! Add to this that often it's not needed to send someone out, because you can always read some random guy's twitter. We don't exactly have less access to news or reporting. The problem is the filtering. But I'm not sad for it. Not one bit! Because it has revealed to us just how things were filtered in the past by the big giants. Not so anymore.

Other than that, you have to remember that there's been a pretty painful phase of adaptation with new and emergent technology. This means a lot of the old bastions have fallen, or are trying to figure out how to cope with the new media reality. Either way tabloids will always sell more than real news, sadly. They also did during the heyday of serious broadsheets, and there's not really any indication that it's going to change in the near future. There are some noble efforts to fight the fake news agenda, that tries to pick apart the rabble of the tabloids, such as Snopes -- until you realise that they're also extremely biased. So in the end, you're left with thinking for yourself, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Probably more of the latter if you believe in UFO's and crystal healing...

I support Timcast because of how refreshing and real his journalism is. I actually had him in mind as an example of a real journalist when I posted the above comment. But it's still going to be an upwards battle, there's a few good ones like Tim, but not nearly enough to replace what we used to call the journalism industry, most of which has turned to mush in past decades.

I am afraid it was mush long before I was born even. That internet platforms could beat it isn't a praise of the platforms but an utter indictment of their quality - if they had it they could survive regardless of medium.

I have a hunch that internet platforms are making the media show it's true colours by revealing how shoddy it is in comparison. The amount of constant smear attacks against new media personalities and big tech to mind. Not that I dislike criticism of big tech, but notice how it wasn't a problem for them until YouTubers (political or not) really started affecting their bottom line as less people go to the news for "entertainment".

Also, say what you want about PewDiePie, but he was able to go toe-to-toe with The Wall Street Journal and win (at least in terms of views and reputation). This just shows how much they've lost control.

I'm not sure that nobody wants to pay. There are too many things to pay for. Suppose 50% of the sources of HN are paywalled with a monthly subscription. How many of them one person could be paying for? Not many I guess. With a per post subscription? More but we're not really there. Furthermore it's hard to ask for money before the customer sees the product. How many disappointments before the pay per article model fails?

The search engine and aggregator sites commoditized information, including technical one. That started killing news, online and paper.

$1500/month in donations? Yeah I'm going to go out on a limb and say the donation model doesn't work for open source.

this isn't open source, it's media. I am/was a LJ subscriber, sad to see it go, but I don't feel starved of similar material.

I think FOSS has not sufficiently explored the donation model. I'd be keen to donate a decent amount of cash to get some fundamental improvements to Emacs, for example. Lots of developers are relatively well paid and use a lot of free tools.

>I wonder if Patreon would consider diverting a small amount of the porn money to worthy causes like Linux Journal.

Hell no. Patreon have already shown they want to be part of the culture war, we don't need to give them any more excuses.

If I want to spend my money on virtual lolis, I expect all of that money (besides the patreon fee) to go to virtual lolis.