I think so much of journalistic consumption is passive rather than active, so difficult to get people to pay for. This leaves us with a situation where the money is coming from elsewhere, which gives us legacy media and fake news.
Things I've seen to fund journalism are:
- Pivoting to commentary (plenty of downfalls here)
- Subscription models where you can charge for extras/exclusives (needs extreme niches)
Also could do a better sales job generally with journalism. I can tell you that for me at least, the topics that generated the most interest and economic value from readers over the past ten years were hard reporting and anaylsis, mostly really deep. So a huge complex train crash in northern Spain in 2013, the messy elections 2014-2016, the whole Catalan separatist trial (every day of it) at the Supreme Court, the first year of the pandemic (including going right inside closed Covid wards with camera and mic before vaccines). The problem with extras is that we're all drowning in "more" anyway and the point of journalism is to bring things into the open, the public sphere. The WP slogan is not wrong.
I agree completely. I was actually going to add that 3rd option... Intense focus on unpredictable sporadic events. But I don't see how someone might survive in between.
