Comment by armchairhacker
4 days ago
Why logically read the news?
- “Breaking” news directly relevant to your life: spreads through other channels
- Lessons on how the world works (systems etc.) that you can apply locally: in practice, embarrassingly most news sources omit key facts and are light on details, and push a narrative which is misleading, so the implicit lessons you’d form are counter-productive. This is inevitable because accurate news is more boring than exaggerated outrage narratives; companies doing the former are out-competed, not just economically, but in popularity (so don’t blame Capitalism, because even if they have sustainable income, they’re outranked in social media feeds). Moreover, events and their context become clearer long after they occur, so “news”, even from the most ideal source, can never be the best way to learn systems.
Most people actually read the news because it’s cheap dopamine, so in a way, news sources adding paywalls are doing their readers a favor.
I pay for a (local, non-english) newspaper. The reporting certainly isn't perfect, but:
- They seem less sensationalist, I guess because they don't depend on clicks to survive - They tell a more complete, less dumbed down story than free sources - They are more boring than free sources
If you want to be informed, the "pay for journalists" model is much better than "hope that advertisers or billionaires pay for you" model.
You can argue that being informed is pointless, but I would argue that independent people working to get informed and then questioning issues is a vital point in a democracy. One model for this is journalists, even if you're not actually reading it.
Local news is different, because it’s more relevant, and moreover we rely on journalists to uncover hidden problems.
I don’t really need to hear about an event or problem happening across the globe, although it could have an important lesson, but I really don’t need to hear about it in a misleading, sensationalist way.
If enough people agree with you, should pay to get your news in a non-misleading, non-sensationalist way.
Sensationalist and misleading news is caused by newspapers that need to appeal to advertising and rich backers. Paying for news is the solution to these issues.
In my experience, paid news sources are better than free ones already in these aspects. Not perfect, but a lot better.