Comment by zaphirplane
9 days ago
How is the publisher supposed to fund their operations let along make a profit. How about a 1 year lock on the archive pages. There are many ways of keeping that record but not taking views undermining the business model
The same way they did back in the day, where libraries still existed that allowed people to read newspapers for free.
I kind of doubt that internet archive is really taking very much business away from them. Its a terrible UI to read the daily news.
The LWN model feels practical here:
> We ask that you grant LWN exclusive rights to publish your work during the LWN subscription period - currently up to two weeks after publication.
News is valuable when it is timely, and subscribers pay for immediate access.
https://lwn.net/op/AuthorGuide.lwn
> How is the publisher supposed to fund their operations let along make a profit.
There used to be plenty newspapers sponsored by wealthy industrialists; the latter would cover the former's gaps between the costs and the sales, the former would regularly push the latter's political agenda.
The "objective journalism" is really quite a late invention IIRC, about the times of WW2.
Objectivity was already a principle in the 1890s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity
"To give the news impartially, without fear or favor." — Adolph Ochs, 1858-1935
Objectivity is the default state of honest storytelling. If I ask what happened ? and somebody only tells the parts that suit an agenda, they have not informed me. The partisan press exists, because someone has a motive to deviate from the natural expectation of fair story telling and story recounting.
> Objectivity is the default state of honest storytelling. If I ask what happened ? and somebody only tells the parts that suit an agenda, they have not informed me.
Already at the level of what stories are covered you have made choices about what's important or not.
Your newspaper not covering your neighbors lawsuit against the city against some issue because they find it to be "not important" is already a viewpoint-based choice
A newspaper presenting both sides on an issue (already simplifying on the "there are two sides to an issue" thing) is one thing. Do you also have to present expert commentary that says that one side is actually just entirely in bad faith? Do you write a story and then conclude "actually this doesn't matter" when that is the case?
There are plenty of descriptions that some people would describe as fair story telling and others would describe as a hit piece. Probably for any article on any controversial topic written in good faith you are likely able to find some people who would claim it's not.
I think it's important to acknowledge that even good faith journalism is filled with subjectivity. That doesn't mean one gives up, you just have to take into account the position of the people presenting information and roll with that.
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It's a great question, but they didn't seem to have a problem with this before AI, so I have to assume that the presence of a free available copy wasn't really impacting their revenue.
If an independent press is critical to open societies, perhaps some sort of citizen directed funding is needed to maintain independence from both capital and government?
Maybe it would be better if these news operations had to find better ways to sustain themselves than the current paradigms. Also, the internet archive is not the only archive, and there will be more. This ins't something they can really stop.
Reconfigure human society so that services like news don't need to make a profit and still remain credible.