What I’ve noticed that happened in Brazil is that most major news channels have 2 websites: a subscription one with quality articles and a free one with very summarized AI lazily written news with no details or context.
There’s really not much to it, quality content needs money and ads don’t pay off for all of it (besides the fact nowadays people just blocks them).
NPR is not free; it’s paid for by taxes, which means that every U.S. citizen is in fact paying for news whether they like it or not. And “not for profit” is not the same as “no cost to the consumer.” In addition, most of the outlets for NPR are local public radio stations that are - you guessed it - funded by taxes (as well as fund drives).
obviously nothing is literally “free”, that’s a trivial point to make. operational funds have to come for somewhere. The point was there’s no additional cost to the reader (that they aren’t already paying for) to get news from those sources and they don’t depend on ad revenue or data monetization to make a profit.
What’s wrong with that? You either buy a product or are a product.
@misk @yesman also you get three options: pay for news, get predatory ads and unreadable websites, or state funded media
Scummy fourth option is Adblock
The side effect of the fourth option is your news outlet dies because it can’t get any money
What I’ve noticed that happened in Brazil is that most major news channels have 2 websites: a subscription one with quality articles and a free one with very summarized AI lazily written news with no details or context.
There’s really not much to it, quality content needs money and ads don’t pay off for all of it (besides the fact nowadays people just blocks them).
npr and associated press are free and not for profit.
Fair point, I don’t envy much about America but NPR is a gem. There’s much more included in News+ though.
NPR is not free; it’s paid for by taxes, which means that every U.S. citizen is in fact paying for news whether they like it or not. And “not for profit” is not the same as “no cost to the consumer.” In addition, most of the outlets for NPR are local public radio stations that are - you guessed it - funded by taxes (as well as fund drives).
NPR/public radio stations get less than 10% of their funding from the federal government.
NPR gets most of its money from corporate sponsorships, which means advertisements, which falls back to being the product
obviously nothing is literally “free”, that’s a trivial point to make. operational funds have to come for somewhere. The point was there’s no additional cost to the reader (that they aren’t already paying for) to get news from those sources and they don’t depend on ad revenue or data monetization to make a profit.