Warning! This is not a directly Linux/Tech related blog post (it is not the only thing I care about in this world :).
One thing that has been on my mind for a while is the state of journalism. The quality of journalism seems to have
been declining over the last decade and I think it is clear that the new internet driven expectation that news content
is free for the consumer is a big part of the explanation. We all know that newspapers and TV news teams have seen their
staff cut as advertising revenue has not been strong enough to keep staffing up. And in my opinion advertising is in itself
a horrible way to finance something like news and information as it drivers a lot of unwanted behaviour both in terms of
avoiding critical journalism that might drive away advertisers and an intensive drive for ‘clicks’ per news article that often
comes at the expense of level of accuracy and making news very scandal driven.
So I have come to believe over the last few years that if we want to see quality journalism and a healthy democracy we need
to move away from free news content to accepting that we get what we pay for and start paying for our news again. This is true
both in terms of mainstream media, but also in terms of topical media like tech media.
So as a start I began paying for some of my most use news sites last year. I am now a paying subscriber to the Economist, which is one
of the best sources of quality news in my opinion and on the tech side I am a paying subscriber to Phoronix (I am also a paying subscriber to LWN through work). Anyway, I feel strongly enough about this to write this blog and hope that other people reading it agree with my thinking here and start paying for the content you enjoy, be that through subscriptions or patreons or similar. And maybe we can be part of a process to change the expectation and understanding of the value of well funded independent media. Lets help make news something that is made to help inform us as readers and not something that is made to help someone sell something to us.
