What exactly are the news publishers even providing these days? They aren't a trust authority and they aren't a distribution platform. The internet undermined the first and replaced the latter.
The future could be readers having a direct relationship with authors, and necessary infrastructure "unbundled" as it were. Author pays a non-partisan fact check service to accredit what they say. With proper accreditation they can appear on the distribution platforms with functioning micropayment models (think app stores).
The only reason this problem is unsolved is because the outdated publishers want to stay relevant and are using their existing momentum to die slow. They're the single point of failure in the three-party equation.
Articles will always need writers and they will always need readers. Everything else is up in the air.
I still trust some news publishers as reliable sources, and so does Wikipedia [1]. If I see an interesting headline on social media which I know will be covered elsewhere, I’ll Google it and read an article from a trustworthy source rather than wasting my time on poorly-written or plagiarised writing. Relying on a trustworthy author is even better, but I don’t know the best authors on every subject I’m interested in, nor do I trust the authors I know and like to write on every topic.
I was thinking that too. People are voluntarily aggregating news for likes, karma, points and recognition. Gathering some news on a certain webpage and re-writing it in your own words is NOT worth my money. But many online news pages are exactly like this nowadays.
HOWEVER
There is still plenty investigative journalism around. Or even sites that take "complex news" such as the newest draft for a certain law and condense this 40 page paper into understandable pieces. This is the kind of stuff I am donating for.
Everything else I can find on HN / Reddit / Or some of the linklogs I follow. Hell, half of the stuff Is just sent to me via $InstantMessenger
I would go as far as to say the only thing that made newspapers relevant was distribution.
The readers have a direct relationship with authors now. They follow them on Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. Authors of news are no longer full-time journalists, but everyone online. Everything is news and everyone is an author.
Why pay the NYT to tell you what people will tell you on Twitter?
Why pay a local paper to tell you about a fire or protest the next day, when people will post a video online as it happens?
The post-Internet generations don’t even watch TV or read newspapers at all.
A video of an event isn’t news. It’s data. News is the information that can be extracted from the video and other sources and put in context.
The Twitter user doesn’t ask questions or if he does they are the wrong questions of the wrong people. And why should he bother asking any questions? He’s not getting paid and his viewers aren’t generally seeking news.
That’s not to say Twitter couldn’t work this way, with Joe Random posting about things on his block. It just doesn’t work that way now because the incentives are just not there. My Nextdoor feed is full of news about my neighborhood, but it’s wrong as often as not. Having a setup like the GP suggests is basically necessary to develop trust between readers, authors, and sources, regardless of how the author delivers their content.
You can argue over what should be considered “news”, but updates and commentary on new events are now distributed online by anyone, outside of print periodicals.
For example, video game streamers I follow on YouTube reacting to new game trailers is news to me. It’s how I learn of upcoming games, among other things.
The NYT and similar periodicals are no longer the gatekeepers of distributing new information and commentary.
They can compete in the new information landscape, but they no longer define it.
Journalists no longer need the periodical, they can work for themselves and distribute through Twitter, newsletters, etc.
You’ve just reiterated your point while missing mine. Random people lack trust and access. I agree we don’t necessarily need The New York Times or whoever for trust and access, but we need something.
In your example you’ve added a gatekeeper. If no one reacts to a trailer, you don’t know it exists. And in return you get neither trust—real companies don’t generally create trailers for fake products and if they did your gatekeeper might still react to it—nor access—the trailers are freely available, probably on the same platform you’re viewing the reactions on.
The future could be readers having a direct relationship with authors, and necessary infrastructure "unbundled" as it were. Author pays a non-partisan fact check service to accredit what they say. With proper accreditation they can appear on the distribution platforms with functioning micropayment models (think app stores).
The only reason this problem is unsolved is because the outdated publishers want to stay relevant and are using their existing momentum to die slow. They're the single point of failure in the three-party equation.
Articles will always need writers and they will always need readers. Everything else is up in the air.