Comment by dredmorbius

The existing funding mechanisms for journalism exacerbate the problem.

The highest-quality generally-accessible journalism is virtually uniformly some form of national or public media, usually broadcast: BBC, DW, CBC, ABC (Australia), Al Jazeera, PBS, NPR. These treat journalism as the public good it is.

For Internet media, I'm increasingly of the view that news costs should be bundled into primary connectivity whether wired or wireless.

The total budget for journalism in the US amounts to less than $200/person. The cost of managing subscription-management systems often greatly exceeds this. (There's no such thing as a free lunch-monetisation system.)

At the 2005 advertising peak, ads income (a cost born by the public through product purchases) was $50 billion. Subscription expense in 2020 was another $11 billion. Pro-rated per person among the 330 million population of the US:

- Advertising: $50 billion -- $150/person ($12.60/person-month)

- Subscription: $11 billion -- $33/person ($2.75/person-month)

- Combined: $61 billion -- $183/person ($15.40/person-month)

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers...

An advertising-free subscription assuming 2.5 persons per household on average would run less than $40/mo. With advertising, the cost would be less than $8/mo. This would fund journalism at the levels of 2005, whilst making the work product available to every household in the US.

My suggestion would be to further index ISP fees to the typical household wealth of an area. Richer locations would pay more, poorer locations would have their news source somewhat subsidised. Businesses could be similarly assessed.

It turns out that either paying directly for news, or indirectly through advertising, creates tremendous distortions.