Ugh, me? Living in a SOCIETY where I have to PAY for things I don’t USE?! What’s next, paying for SCHOOLS when I don’t have KIDS?!

Kinda telling on yourself by calling it “drastic”. What exactly is “severe” or “rapid” about supporting alternative methods of transportation?

Damn, you really incensed a whole bunch of people who seem to like living in soulless, identical car-centric hells. What normal person thinks you expect “a sudden drastic change” from a silly comment like this?

Removing the need for existing newspapers to rely on advertising to keep costs low enough for the consumer to be able to purchase an issue would go very far.

The problem has always been that the academic or “platonic” ideal of journalism as this “objective, 4th estate” that “speaks truth to power” has always been at odds with the costs of doing business. In fact, the first newspapers were owned by Political Parties and wore their affiliations on their sleeves. Switching to advertiser-supported models enabled more independence from political parties in the 1800s.

What’s also true is that most local newspapers (heck, papers in general) are at least on paper, objective in the sense that their journalists are free to pursue and write the stories they want using their professional judgment.

It doesn’t invalidate it. It’s accurate that for a time, privately owned, for-profit newspapers would (and did in the past) result in a multitude of viewpoints since the editorial stances will are inherently more diverse between 20 newspapers instead of 2.

Whether or not the current vertical and horizontally integrated media companies will be broken up is irrelevant to the fact that it would result in a more diverse and freer press.

A tax funded solution would most likely take the form of a single entity. If 4 entities dominating the press is wrong, then 1 is even worse.

Another paywall workaround

Disabled on lots of sites now

It scales. Privately owned community newspapers might have a bias, but if there’s one in every town with 1,000 people, then exponentially that increases the amount of different agendas of each of those private entities, and they can sort of cover each other’s weaknesses. It’s the concentration and consolidation that’s the issue.

Of course, private industry inherently wants to merge and consolidate, as is the nature of capitalist competition. So either you continually break up mergers or develop a public community newspapers that are independent of any government - its debatable how independent the BBC or CBC are.

Firefox has an autoplay block setting, and I’ve never had it fail me.

Very few people honestly want to do nothing. Even the image of the unemployed pot smoker who watched cartoons all day, maybe that person would find fulfillment in art? Or maybe they’re passionate about something important in their community.

The same issue applies to government-run news too. You see it with the BBC as a government owned and funded institution. It’s domestic UK news is pro-Monarchy, pro-Tory, and this is because of how it’s set up.

Private news media, when there’s a lot of it, tends to be less biased in the end because they’re trying to compete with each other, meaning they can’t go too far in one overt political slant. When one person controls more and has a wider reach, that dynamic becomes less important as they gain greater control over where journalists go and what events they cover.

I support public news media, but community-owned papers would avoid the monopolistic issue of either corporate consolidation or a government funded alternative.

You can always have it be publicly funded but managed by a non profit designated by the government, and make it organized in such a way that if a politician or government institution had a problem with some reporting, there’s nothing they can do.

The same concerns about editorial independence and human fallacy apply in the private sector top. There has always been pressure between the editorial, marketing, and journalist parts of newspapers.

With so many shows getting canceled, or even un-confirmed and then obliterated from existence all for tax write offs, I’m kinda soured on Streaming these days.

Hopefully the WGA and SAG strikes are successful and result in streaming improving again, back to how it felt during the mid 2010s.

When I had more income I paid for the NYT, but tbh they’ve made enough questionable editorial decisions lately that I’ve decided it wasn’t worth it. The Guardian isn’t paywalled at least.

How long before this goes the way of 12ft.io

Reddit didn’t always have that, and Lemmy I think is in many ways meant to resemble Reddit before the introduction of user-focused features. Kbin has the option though.

Should plant something more wild and ecological anyways 😔