I can't imagine paying for news.

Then how should the journalists that write about it get paid? I for one would rather pay for news than have to watch ad content for it instead.

It’s not so much about having to watch ads, it’s the incentive alignment towards what’s good for advertisers over what’s good for readers.

I pay for some good quality news and the quality and the lack of native advertising is worth it.

Unfortunately that is almost never enough. If your competition is populist media financed by state-level/billionaire agendas, it is impossible to compete in the long term. We would need a complete and general ban on political financing across all media to sustain such a market.

I paid for TheGuardian because if we don't support truly independent, objective, investigative journalism, who will?

Certainly not Billionaires buying newspapers (e.g. Washington Post/Bezos, ...).

> if we don't support truly independent, objective, investigative journalism, who will?

Like Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros and countless other billionaires through their "charities"? https://theguardian.org/

Just because they are liberal and non-profit doesn't mean they are independent, that only appears this way if you only think in the narrow confines of the Overton Window between "conservative" and "liberal" of mainstream discourse.

I guess you can't imagine a free, open democratic state with rule of law either. Because when broad, independent, quality journalism with a wide audience is gone, all you'll have to worry about is that poor cat in a tree in Ottawa.

This free, open democratic state with rule of law funds broad, independent, quality journalism from the public purse: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvxgl3n138o

Until Farage becomes the PM. Then you'll find out what state funding means.

BBC is not independent high quality journalism, as we can see from how they cover Israel and Gaza and the corresponding UK protests.