If people don’t want to pay, then they don’t actually value the news. I pay for publications that I trust and want to continue reading.

The key is finding a niche where the news organization can produce quality reporting that people actually value. “Free News” is just another ad business.

There's an even more fundamental problem: even if you can pay the salaries, how do you ensure that your organization remains aligned with the original goal? How do you prevent it from being subtly influenced by the confluence of interests it will be exposed to by virtue of wielding influence? How do you defend against less than subtle interests?

Note that charging for the news does not defend you against this.

It’s unfortunate we haven’t solved the micro-payment problem. Crypto was an obvious solution but anything would require a hefty network effect. But imagine like a starbucks card or whatever you have your micropayment card, and it auto reloads when it hits zero with 20 bucks or whatever. When you visit the times, a modal pops up, “This article costs $0.02. Read it? y/n or $1 for a day pass”. Sure pirates will get around it but they already do. Just make it grandma easy and you’re done. It’s just the money probably isn’t good enough for VC dollars to roll something out with enough big players to jump in.

> How exactly can you provide impartial, objective reporting when you cant afford the salaries?

you provide free service, build brand and ecosystem, and charge for extra services, e.g. automatic-monitoring specific news topic, analytics, faster delivery on scale, etc. and even ads/ads free accounts

NPR/public radio has been doing a decent job without much obtrusive third-party advertising.

Political parties and foreign actors, eventually. Propaganda pieces are usually free to access.

Maybe that is part of the plan, eliminate truth so that everyone just gives up.

Perhaps crowd sourced facts/news with legit upvoting, weighted upvoting based on historic 'credibility'. Top contributions get a share of add revenue.

Mass syndication has worked splendidly for all other media. But textual media publishers still refuse.

They have to learn from Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, and such and start offering bulk subscriptions for a fair price. It's better for the individual news providers to earn 10 cents each from 10 million subscribers, than to earn 10 dollars each from 10 000 subscribers.

There's an obvious answer: a good public news service.

I know, I know, that one is problematic too. Some countries have pulled it off relatively successfully, but it's never perfect.

The thing is, this is exactly what the government is for: services that individuals don't want to pay for, but are important to have as a society.

This is possible if there's a real division of powers in the government. Yes, that sounds increasingly unlikely now, but it's no fantasy, it has been achieved in many different places and moments in history, to a reasonable degree.

I mean, there's a reason why journalism is called "the fourth estate", maybe it should literally be the fourth independent government branch alongside the executive, legislative and judicial. We are in the "information age" after all. Or at least a relatively independent and technocratic government agency with decent funding.

And don't tell me that "we have it but nobody watches it", then it's just not properly funded or supported. The BBC is extremely competitive alongside commercial news media, both in the UK and internationally. Many countries have similarly strong public media even if it is not internationally as well known, because of the language barrier.

I don't think the following is a great idea for many reasons, but it's an idea that has been on my mind for a while and I'd like to share it to hear some thoughts:

Germany has (used to have? I don't follow this closely) the "church tax": citizens are obligated to pay the tax no matter how much faith they have, but are free to channel it to a denomination/organization they believe in.

Maybe a liberal, democratic state could successfully build something similar for news organizations: all citizens have to pay a "journalism tax", which they then channel to a subscription for a vehicle they trust.

Yes, a million ways this can be abused, the government may censor opposition, etc. I know, I said the idea wasn't great. But worth pondering. Also, this is based on a very stylized understanding of how said German tax works (I'm not German and never looked at it that deeply)

btw I understand this is the opposite of "free", but more about journalism financing in general.

> If the people arent interested in paying

They are, according to the OP:

https://www.sltrib.com/news/business/2026/03/31/tribune-payw...

Don't try to be "objective" or "impartial." That's an impossible task, and anyone claiming to do so is being dishonest.

Instead, own your biases. Make them explicit and public. That way people can understand were you're coming from, and take that into account.

There will always be bias in any reporting. It's better to make it visible than to pretend it doesn't exist.

This means having a clear perspective and "owning" that perspective, instead of shying away from it.

Coincidentally, this type of thinking can dramatically increase brand loyalty and trust.

Wait, I never understood why we need "intrepid reporters" hired by a certain company to enter a war zone, for instance. Everyone has cameras now. They're ubiquitous.

What we really need is collaboration online to make sense of the footage being uploaded.

And the same for any kind of news. Why do we need the capitalist model again? Look at Wikipedia, Linux, open source software, and more.

...is there a difference? The donors tend to have just as much of an agenda to push

"beholden to donors" is a nonsensical phrase, unless "donors" is defined with a wink, a nod, and air-quotes.

Why is being beholden to advertisers who just want to make a buck better than donors with specific political goals to change and shape society how they want it to look. (Eg anti-abortion movements.)

Discussion of the free-press in america or elsewhere invariably suffers from lack of historical perspective. Without oversimplifying, the press has always been biased and ideologically motivated to a degree that few appreciate. Because of "all the president's men" and other films lionizing the press' infallible, dogged, ruthless dedication to the truth, people suddenly believe that every journalist is "supposed to be" a paragon of truth-seeking objectivity, dogmatically devoted to the dissemination of "truth to power", but historically and today and even during watergate, the press was a gang of jackals doing yellow muckraking. This has its purpose and we shouldn't hate journalists for doing their job, but it's a complete category error to assume that the press is there to report honestly and objectively.

Why? It’s not clear to me that the motives of a small group of people paying to control the news that I see are better than the motives of a variety of companies trying to get me to buy razor blades and Jeeps. At least in the latter case I know that “big razor” cares about selling razor blades. Who knows what big donors are trying to get me to think.

How does this happen in practice? Wouldn’t the privately funded news companies still cover the story? Or are all the news companies publicly funded?

Can’t criticize the Liberals because they hold the purse strings. Can’t support the Conservatives because defunding them is explicitly on their platform.

Quite the pickle.

I do find it funny that the Online News Act, enacted by a Liberal Government, which effectively banned Canadian news from Facebook caused a financial crisis for the media companies that the government wanted to “protect” by strong-arming companies like Google and Meta into paying these companies for distributing their product for basically free for them.

Pretty economically illiterate to try to force a distribution company to pay the company they are providing their distribution service for.

There is no winning.

'Free' and 'government funded' are not the same thing. The OP doesn't seem to be government funded.

Also, the BBC has no problem criticizing the UK government.

There always have been and will continue to be. The site is not hostile to adblockers, though.

What is that based on?

I use apnews.com, no paywall.

The Guardian

In the US: NPR, NBC, AP, The Guardian, ...