Online Journalism Is Becoming a Billionaires' Plaything (Again) 143
Nerval's Lobster writes "In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, the titular newspaper magnate (played with cheeky insouciance by Orson Welles) gleefully tells a doubter that he's prepared to lose a million dollars every year in order to keep publishing. "At a rate of a million dollars a year," he smirks, "I'll have to close this place in 60 years." Over the past decade, of course, many newspapers and magazines have lost a lot more than a million dollars a year, and there are signs that online publications are having trouble holding their finances together, as well. But some very rich people are stepping in to prop things up: first Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million, then eBay founder Pierre Omidyar offered journalist Glenn Greenwald a whole lot of cash to start up a general interest publication. Billionaires and multimillionaires, of course, have total freedom to fund whatever they want—and that could be a good thing for publications with a mission and a serious need for cash. But what if the rich investor disagrees with something that his pet publication releases into the world? If (and when) that situation occurs, it could serve as an interesting test of whether the latest version of this "generous benefactor" model can work more effectively as an impartial channel for news than it has in the past (when conflicts of interest often sparked titanic fights between editors and owners)."
As every paid journo knows (Score:5, Insightful)
The freedom of the press belongs to the owner of the press.
The problem is for profit news... (Score:5, Insightful)
.. always bends to business or advertisers. At this point I'd like (I know it's unrealistic) to have a news organization that's totally funded by the public via central bank and they have a bottomless well of money to spend in case of political emergency (aka build it into the system) that's run by the sanest citizens. They are picked for their sanity and respect for the truth. People who accept science, aren't easily fooled by left/right ideology, understand that societies have to change in accordance with what is true about the universe, even if that up-ends the status quo. We have people trying to cling to 19th century ideologies in a world where technology is fast making human elements unprofitable over the long term.
News sucks so bad because most people are just too scared or too sheepish to actually call out the corporate system on its bullshit because they depend on that very system for survival, too many people are easily manipulated by the threats of loss of income, relationships and status.
Re:insouciance? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Are you honestly claiming that you believe at least 200 million English-speaking people read that article and happen to already be familiar with the word "insouciance"? It's unlikely that there's even ten million English speakers throughout the entire world who've even heard of that word."
Au contraire, it's le mot juste.
English is a cache for french words, not only faux éminences grises, poseurs and blasé parvenus know that it is de rigueur to know them. Ask your fiancé.
Sorry, I have to leave you with this impasse, my hors d'oeuvre (mélange of mange-tout with mousse) is ready and I need some change for the pourboire for my garçon.
Sorry for the pastiche.
The New is Just Like the Old (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not so much about disagreement with content (Score:4, Insightful)
But what if the rich investor disagrees with something that his pet publication releases into the world?
It is much more about the content, in *all* cases where a billionaire takes over, becoming poorer and poorer. Why ? Because the billionaire has become a billionaire by earning ( lots of ) money, and is 100% geared toward .... earning money. The only way to do that, with media, in our dystopian world, is by advertising. Advertising only works well if and when the media carrying the ads reach a large public. A large public can only be reached by rendering content poorer: shallower, shorter, simpler.
And that is how it works and has worked, e.g. for the ( prime example ! ) French "quality newspaper" Le Monde. Up to the beginning of the '90s, that newspaper was owned by private investors, philantropists actually, who knew that producing a quality newspaper costs money, more than that same newspaper can bring in. But then, some time in the '90s, Le Monde was taken over by rich investors. The result: from the stern, photo-less format for which it was famous, from great heights of linguistic refinement and from immense depths of understanding and background articles, Le Monde went to... well, pretty much the same format as other large-public newspapers: advertisements everywhere, shallow articles dealing with the craze and the hype of the day. If even Le Monde could not do it, I do not see how any other serious media can do it, whether they be newspaper, tv programme, radio - you name it.
Conclusion: any take-over of traditional media by billionaires is bad news. Bad news for the public at large. Bad news for the employed, conscientious journalists and reporters. Bad news for the "third power" that media have come to be in our ramshackle democracies. Bad news for all.
Re:The problem is for profit news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Such organisation would still have to keep happy the politicians who decide to allocate the money.
A better solution is to have everything: Government-funded news, privately sponsored news, advertiser-funded news, volunteer-operated enthusiast news. All biased, but in different directions, and constantly fact-checking each other.
Re:The problem is for profit news... (Score:3, Insightful)
But how do you get around the problem of a media outlet becoming an organ of the state? There is an unavoidable risk that news reporting will become beholden to whomever controls the purse strings. But the more of them there are competing for advertising revenue, the less it costs to advertise with them. The broader the base of financial support, the harder it is to become beholden to any one source.
Of course, the theory behind public funding (through the government, not pledge drives) is that the media is then beholden to each individual. However, it is the body that funnels the funds to them to which they will become beholden.