I hate paywalls as much as anyone, but I’ve been thinking lately… how can we expect to fund quality journalism without paying for any news? Is it viable to rely on donations alone?
Mmm, there is something like that in the UK. It’s called a TV licence. The idea stopped working with the advent of the internet. Why pay into the funds when you can get everything you want for free?
I agree and still don’t have a solution. I read a lot of news and I like to read different views on the same topic, like reading a very leftish and a very conservative article. But I just cant pay all of them. :/
My idea was to pay two different newspapers (one for daily news the other a monthly magazine) so that I pay at least some journalists and read the rest for free. And then change whom I am paying every year or two. For this I need antipaywall to still read the rest…
Now with some friends we have subscriptions to different newspapers and share them, but usually u have a fixed amount of devices you can connect to one subscription so more than 3 newspapers is difficult already.
I really liked this flattr idea but I think it died. It was something like you give an amount of money every month to your flattr account and then when you read articles and you liked them you press the flattr button.l at the end of the article. At the end of the month flatttr would distribute your money among all sites that you clicked the bottom with the amount corresponding to how many articles you liked… very good idea. But died(?) with paywalls.
I hate paywalls as much as anyone, but I’ve been thinking lately… how can we expect to fund quality journalism without paying for any news? Is it viable to rely on donations alone?
You don’t. That’s why journalism today is utterly bad.
I thought about it years ago. Came to the conclusion that they would have to be extremely popular. Good journalists have good pays, after all.
Edit: I think there should be some multi-national free/objective reporting fund to make it possible.
Mmm, there is something like that in the UK. It’s called a TV licence. The idea stopped working with the advent of the internet. Why pay into the funds when you can get everything you want for free?
I agree and still don’t have a solution. I read a lot of news and I like to read different views on the same topic, like reading a very leftish and a very conservative article. But I just cant pay all of them. :/
My idea was to pay two different newspapers (one for daily news the other a monthly magazine) so that I pay at least some journalists and read the rest for free. And then change whom I am paying every year or two. For this I need antipaywall to still read the rest…
Now with some friends we have subscriptions to different newspapers and share them, but usually u have a fixed amount of devices you can connect to one subscription so more than 3 newspapers is difficult already.
I really liked this flattr idea but I think it died. It was something like you give an amount of money every month to your flattr account and then when you read articles and you liked them you press the flattr button.l at the end of the article. At the end of the month flatttr would distribute your money among all sites that you clicked the bottom with the amount corresponding to how many articles you liked… very good idea. But died(?) with paywalls.