@tralinda@mastodon.social @hiitslissy @Plaer1 @Dahlialith
There are not a lot of ways to get breaking local news though. My local news paper is dying on the vine. Over 90% of its content is national or state news because they don't have reporters in town any more. Same with local TV stations -- sure if something explodes there will be news coverage, but local school board meetings, city council decisions, homelessness, crime that doesn't rise to the level of sensationalism; the only way I find these is from local citizen journalists, and they are still mainly on twitter.
@antares @tralinda @hiitslissy @Plaer1 @Dahlialith I was chatting with a local news person here a couple of weeks ago, wondering if the model of people donating to server admins might work to run local papers at some point. There's a lot of goodwill towards local papers and journalism I think.
@nomdeb @Dahlialith @tralinda @antares @hiitslissy @Plaer1 Lol we used to call such money given by readers to papers “subscriptions”
The subscription model has some real drawbacks. A subscription is a payment for delivery of content. In a would where content is no longer a scarce comedy the value of a subscription falls below the cost of production.
We need to switch to a model where content is made available and we ask people to support local journalism. I think if local coverage is to recover it will need a funding model that looks far more like public media than subscriptions.
@RedCanoe @nomdeb @Dahlialith @tralinda@mastodon.social @hiitslissy @Plaer1
@antares @RedCanoe @nomdeb @Dahlialith @tralinda @hiitslissy @Plaer1
Substack and the like have gone the way of "#freemium"
PS How does the blesséd #guardian survive?
@cdarwin you asked, "How does the blesséd #guardian survive?"
The answer is that national and super regional publications like the New Your times, SF Chronicle, or Washington Post along with specialty publications like the Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic have a large enough subscriber bast (for now) to continue to operate. Localized media does not.
@alex_galt @cdarwin In theory that was what McClatchy was doing -- buying up local papers in order to create economies of scale. What actually happened was that they gutted the local news room and replaced most of the content with national and regional news.
@crprod @antares
@alex_galt
I am spoiled, living in #SantaBarbara, where there's a vibrant local news community, including #edhat #noozhawk #sbindependant
@antares @alex_galt @cdarwin that was certainly true in Durham NC. The previous owners had decided not to compete in the old way for national and world news, but they promised lots of exclusive local coverage. That disappeared with McClatchy. Now we had little local news and coverage of any kind is on the principle of “yesterday’s news tomorrow.”