Some kind of micro transaction model sounds appealing to me. I‘d pay 5 to 25 cents to read articles from different sources. I already subscribe to local newspapers but can’t afford to subscribe to the many I read from here on Lemmy.
Comment on A lot of the laid-off staff from the Washington Post should start a news cooperative. Seriously!
TomMasz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Serious question: What would be the funding model? It seems like the number of people willing to pay for journalism is fairly small, though nowhere near zero.
lettruthout@lemmy.world 1 day ago
rainwall@piefed.social 1 day ago
The pirate bay guys tried to spin up somthing called flattr a decade or two back. You put in a fixed amount per month, then when you engage with media you like you click a “flattr” button and that media gets a slice. You coule alao setup differnt people to always get a cut.
Say you put in $10/month and flattr 100 things? Everyone gets 10 cents. $100/month? $1 each.
It didnt catch on, likely due to processing fees, but I always like that idea. Signing up for dozens or hundreds of patrons/ghosts/etc is just too hard to manage and fund, but if I and several million other people could hand out pennies a month, it might really matter to small artists/journalists.
DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Maybe crowdfunding and donations perhaps?
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
When the Denver Post got bought out by a private equity company (you know how that goes), a bunch of journalists from there got together to create the Colorado Sun. It operates on a model similar to NPR/PBS, except federal/Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding was never a thing to begin with.
I’m not sure how well it’s working, but well enough that they’re still around after several years!