Comment by tsimionescu
5 months ago
> That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?
Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas. Rather than costs, the much bigger obstacle to good journalism is censorship, much of it coming from company leadership, which doesn't want a bad relationship with advertisers or the government.
> Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas.
Come on. It investigative journalism takes a lot of time, and in the mean time, the journalist has bills to pay.
An opinion-haver or second-hand news analyst can build a Substack following by picking a theme and pumping out a blog post every couple days, but that's not practical for someone who might only be able put out a story every couple months on varying topics (based on whatever scoops they get).
I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.
Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.
And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense. I suspect people buy these news rooms because their ROI comes from manufacturing consent (power and influence) - not monetizing investigative journalism.
> I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.
> Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.
No. In the mean time, you have opinion-havers and other investigative journalists writing articles, maintaining a steady audience. An "individual [investigative journalist] who is personally invested in their work" wouldn't have the steady output to maintain one.
> And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense.
The economics of solo news make even less sense.
The point isn't that it's cheaper to do investigative journalism than opinion pieces. The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation. And I firmly believe that big news corps are mostly actively against IJ, so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.
> The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation....so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.
I think you're pushing a fantasy. I don't think "going independent" is really viable for a person unless they 1) have pre-existing fame, 2) independent wealth (or a patron), or 3) cut corners with the project in some way.