Re:Why micropayments will never be a thing in journalism
by ryandvm on Friday June 19, 2020 @09:07AM
(#23574111)
Absolutely. When it comes down to it, most people don't want to be informed, they want their ego to be comforted.
Advertising-driven news may be the root of the current partisanship pandemic, but replacing it with pay-per-view news is only going to make things worse. Instead of mostly watching *News but getting bits and piece from other sources, you'd have vast swaths of the population that subsist entirely on "news" from OANN or Daily Kos. Yikes.
Re:Why micropayments will never be a thing in journalism
by mc32 on Thursday June 18, 2020 @09:06PM
(#23569970)
By the looks of it, some countries are moving towards state sponsored journalism which serves as propaganda and also dissemination of narrative and when itβs not state sponsored the government imposes restrictions on press freedom (speech). We saw this with Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 and related coverage.
Re:Why micropayments will never be a thing in journalism
by easytiger on Friday June 19, 2020 @07:14AM
(#23573214)
Indeed. All very worrying.
The opposition party in the UK proposed two things before the last election.
State controlled social network [1]
"Democratisation" of major media where the editorial policy is set by activists [2]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/23/corbyn-prop...
2. https://www.ft.com/content/555f2012-a6b5-11e8-926a-7342fe5e1...
Pretty much as evil as it gets in the modern age
People will donate/subscribe to journalism which claims it faces an existential threat. They will only subscribe to journalism they think is most antagonistic to the political entity they despise (as those are now the TOE for having political views now). They aren't subscribing for news, they are paying to shore up a vaguely legitimised view of their prejudices.
This will mean journalism will have to become more biased, more unsound, more toxic and more representative of the various political echo chambers on social media as they court donations.
I see no other way this evolves.