
Warren Buffett Sees Most Newspapers as ‘Toast’ After Ad Decline - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/warren-buffett-sees-most-newspapers-as-toast-after-ad-decline
======
davidw
This is a problem for all of us:

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-
news...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/study-when-local-newspaper-
close-city-bond-finances-suffer/561422/)

And it's one that requires money to solve, because to cover local politics
well, you need someone who sits through the local city council meetings, with
their hours of discussion of things like 'sign ordinances' to write up a
summary, or maybe bring attention to something that they're spending a lot of
money on.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
> need someone who sits through the local city council meetings

City council meetings can be lived-streamed, auto-transcribed, and their
agenda can be posted. People will still of course offer their opinions on the
subject on their social medias. We don't need newspapers to do this.

~~~
yasth
Rarely does a good local reporter just sit in on the meetings generally they
also get some background from parties presenting, and on the council. Often
they even develop sources that provide a bit more insider information.

And most importantly they follow up. The meeting is the start. Ihe rest is
follow through. If the council are approving a special zoning permit, they go
out and talk to neighbors, or the contractors previous special work, etc.

To say that you can just get some text is a bit like suggesting that wget is a
good replacement for a web browser. Sure it does some of the stuff, but it
isn't the real deal.

~~~
davidw
Yes! And really, how many people are going to sit there through 4/5/6 hours of
streaming at every meeting to get the interesting nuggets?

~~~
tjr
...or even understand why the interesting nuggets are interesting? One thing I
appreciate about (good) journalism is highlighting implications that I would
not have thought of myself, because I lack sufficient background knowledge.

~~~
chopin
But which local outlet does that? The local news I have access to certainly
not.

~~~
arrrg
They still provide summaries, meaning the needed time-investment to get a base
level understanding of relevant topics is radically lower.

I think somehow dreaming up a local newspaper that does the same in-depth
reporting as, say, the New York Times is just dumb and and doesn’t really help
someone arguing in favor of local journalism.

Just summarizing the most important points that were discussed during a
council meeting is actually plenty good enough. You could do better, but even
just that provides quite a lot of value.

------
munk-a
I really think we as a society need to figure out how to properly fund
unbiased reporting without letting the government step in as a censor but
while letting outlets be called out for outright falsehoods - I think this is
a very hard problem to solve and solutions have been tried many times in the
past.

~~~
gutnor
It could be done with a new separate branch of government. It used to be there
was good money to make doing it privately, but nowadays the system needs
government funding. Impartial and accessible (also meaning average Joe can
understand it) information is as fundamental as the judiciary in order to
maintain a working democracy.

There are various element of it in various countries. Like national offices of
statistic. There are stuff like the BBC and variety of EU initiative to inform
about various processes. Democratic government keep complete record and have
public service already make analysis and summary for ministers to work with.
So it's not like it is out of the realm of the achievable. Maybe an official
rating could be created based on a service like politifact that independant
newspaper must display on their frontpage like the food safety rating for
restaurants. Teach the kid at school that anything not rated is basically
fiction and that will take care of the majority of the population.

There is the risk of it becoming a propaganda arm of the government, sure, but
you can have the same argument with every branch of the government. There is
no intrinsic reason to trust the judiciary, the military or the police, except
a tradition of being trustworthy which is really what maintain the whole
system running: a lot of honest people everywhere. In any case, that's a moot
point since the journalism it replaces is dying, and we know the new media
that is killing it is not even pretending to have any kind of integrity.

~~~
Aloha
You can't have the government report on the government and expect full
independence - even if it is independent of the executive, you still need to
fund it somehow, which is going to make it beholden to someone.

Both the BBC and CBC have a history of government influence in their reporting
- this is not a civil society function I can trust to government.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> Both the BBC and CBC have a history of government influence in their
> reporting

Citation absolutely required. The BBC have always sought to be impartial -
which brings its own, occasionally absurd, biases. Their charter has always
_required_ they separate from government and impartial.

They've managed to piss off almost every government, of every colour, in
almost equal measure.

~~~
Aromasin
They have a wonderful knack of appearing biased to Labour or Conservative,
depending on whether you're Conservative or Labour supporter.

------
zachware
This is fundamentally a distribution problem. It's not dissimilar to retail or
other industries with the design-produce-distribute-market chain.

A journalist (creator), produces a product (manufacturer), a
newspaper/magazine distributed it (distribution) and a publisher creates the
allure that makes you want to trust that brand (marketing). All that stuff was
hard and expensive 15 years ago and consumers didn't have the tools to find
the creator and the creator didn't have the tools to distribute.

A bunch of bundled industries are falling apart with the unbundling but in
almost all cases there remains a creator that the mass population is now
"capable" of finding. And the tools that allow for cheap distribution are
basically free.

What's lacking is the arbitrage of the distribution platform's earning power
to pay steady wages to journalists.

The worst thing that happened to journalism was no-paywall outlets. It
convinced people that content is free. It's as if we buy toothpaste at CVS for
$3 and on Amazon it's free just because it's on the internet. At a certain
point you start to devalue ALL toothpaste rather than just devaluing crap
toothpaste because Amazon makes it easier for you to buy toothpaste you like.

Today I can follow a journalist's work. I can follow a specific topic. But I
have yet to figure out that doing that work costs money. So no matter the
paywall model, it's gonne be hard for consumers to fund it.

~~~
davidw
> but in almost all cases there remains a creator that the mass population is
> now "capable" of finding.

I don't think that is true with local news.

At our city council meetings, you see two news outlets:

* The local paper had a reporter who would sit through the whole damn thing.

* The local TV news, who would show up, get some clips of the meeting, a few sound bites with different people, and then pack up and leave in order to get the segment produced for the 10 o'clock news.

Now, the paper is going through bankruptcy and the person doing the city
council beat has left.

I'm not sure anyone will sit through the whole meeting to cover it all.

~~~
neilv
Boston has a long-time independent hyperlocal reporter, Adam Gaffin
("[https://universalhub.com/"](https://universalhub.com/")), who actually sits
through not only city council meetings, but even liquor licensing board
hearings and zoning hearings.

Gaffin was an early "tech" industry reporter, IIRC, and involved pretty early
in the Internet. He invested many years in building a hyperlocal news
following, and apparently now makes a modest living off of ads and donations.

Gaffin's is impressive for a one-person operation, but of course his coverage
isn't complete, and a major city really needs at least tens of sharp
journalists covering the basics. Unfortunately, although the two main local
papers (Boston Globe, Boston Herald) are soldiering on thus far, they're in
financial trouble, and have been sold and under new management since their
heydays.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, and as you write, Boston is a major city. If it's struggling, think
about all the towns with 50K, 100K, or 200K...

------
sytelus
Interestingly it’s not the readership that has plummeted but the ad revenue
that has evaporated. [https://www.journalism.org/fact-
sheet/newspapers/](https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/)

In other words, many newspapers still do get more or less same eyeballs as
before but the price that advertisers are willing to pay for them has taken
nose dive. So it’s not about circulation but ad revenue generated per
subscriber.

~~~
basetop
"Same number of readers" is deceptive since the overall population has
increased. In 1990 there were about 220 million people in the US. Today, there
are 320 million.

So newspapers have a smaller market share and a much older demographics.

It's more than "ad revenue generated per subscriber", it's also operating cost
to generate revenue. Most newspapers are unionized and salaries, benefits,
costs, etc have increased while revenue stagnated. That's why newspapers have
to constantly lay people off. If costs stayed stagnant along with revenue,
then newspapers theoretically could be fine. But inflation doesn't allow that.

Due to legacy ( essentially what advertisers know and are comfortable with ),
advertisers spend more for each pair of eyeballs on print, tv, etc. Since
digital is new, advertisers spend less per pair of eyeballs. That's can't last
forever as digital gets more established. It's why large newspapers are moving
quickly onto social media and the internet. It's where eyeballs and ad
spending is going to be.

Also, local and mid tier newspapers are facing digital headwinds as social
media focuses on boosting "trusted authoritative sources". So the big boys -
The NYTimes, WSJ, Bloomberg, etc are going to thrive as they eat the smaller
newspapers' lunch with the help of google, facebook, apple, etc.

What we are seeing is a form of stealth media consolidation. Smaller
newspapers are being bought up by larger newspapers. Sadly, it's happening in
every industry. More consolidation, less competition.

------
ravenstine
I haven't seen anyone bring up changes in the average reader's lifestyle that
could impact how often they read local newspapers. It seems commonly accepted
that people have to pick up and move more often these days for career
advancement. I know that myself and those in my circle of friends all end up
moving every few years for career purposes. If people spend years or decades
not settling down, how invested can they really get in the local news?

------
_bxg1
Journalism joins the list of domains that simply don't work as capitalistic
institutions, alongside healthcare, education, higher-level academic research,
and environmental stewardship. These things serve important public good but
aren't sustainable by a consumer-based model. They have to have public
funding.

~~~
jcfrei
I don't buy into that anti capitalism argument. It suggests that people aren't
aware of the value they receive through newspapers and a consumption based
model is therefore not working. I do see a danger in monopolies (or even
oligopolies) but that can be prevented by competition regulators. But apart
from that it seems people simply don't value traditional newspapers enough to
keep so many of them running.

~~~
_bxg1
You're right, they don't. But it's not about physical newspapers, it's about
journalism itself. Journalism itself is not being funded. This is partly
because internet platforms/adtech have broken its financing model. Of course
it's possible for the ideologically-minded to counter this by donating to
journalism organizations for their public service, without turning to the
public sector. But people obviously aren't doing that (enough).

The reality is that individuals often don't think in terms of a big enough
picture to support abstract public goods with private donations. Capitalism
would say "good, people apparently don't want those things, let them die". But
"people don't think about it" and "it doesn't have value" are very different
things.

------
tumba
Here is a relevant interview with journalist Steven Pearlstein in which he
suggests that current conditions only support 7-9 global journalism outlets
worldwide, with only 2 or so non-partisan and fact-based, mostly for the upper
classes.

[http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2019/article/capita...](http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2019/article/capitalisn-
t-why-capitalism-needs-journalism)

~~~
majani
Well those 7-9 outlets could enable porous paywalls that allow for shared
links to be viewed for free.

------
ww520
Newspapers used to be the gateway of fast changing information. The Internet
changes that completely. With so many different kinds and sources of news on
the web, and with ever faster publishing speed, newspapers have lost their
biggest moat. It's only a matter of time they will be gone.

~~~
pravda
> Newspapers used to be the gateway of fast changing information.

Wrong answer!

Here's the correct answer: Newspapers used to have a monopoly on advertising.
They could extract enormous sums of money from advertisers due to this.

Most towns had a single newspaper, because the nature of the newspaper
business generally led to a natural monopoly. Big cities had maybe had two or
three newspapers.

Newspaper owners lost their monopoly. No more overpriced classifieds!

No more money gushing in!

~~~
baroffoos
Now instead of 2 newspapers having a monopoly over one city we now have 2
companies who have a monopoly over most of the planet.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
It's more like a few advertising networks where thousands of journalism sites
host ads where all advertisers bid on fairly.

The tech monopolies is a separate topic.

------
chiefalchemist
Less newspapers is a concern.

A bigger concern is the shameles willingness of video-based news media to
publish anything in order to tickle more eyeballs.

Less sources of information is bad. Misinformation is worse.

------
Joakal
My favourite two ideas for the future.

Currently, most places, the news is funded by ads, subscriptions or gov funded
agency. So this idea would replace above with voters. Done via a change to the
government system to have two people in same seat; politician and shadow
politician (SP). Both paid positions but SP wouldn't have any power.

Pros:

\- SP doesn't need to go back to full time job and wait for next election
cycle.

\- SP will continue to represent the leftover voters and question the
politician. (Its beyond me why election systems do not allow representation
for miniority voters. Ie win with 51% of vote, 49% voters are NOT represented
by anyone??)

\- Not biased towards companies, ad revenue, subscriptions.

Cons:

\- Need to pay SP.

\- Biased to getting elected.

Second idea: government site where anyone with ID can post news.

Pros:

\- Free for citizens.

\- Ideally, government won't take dowm articles. Just because anyone can post,
doesn't mean no consequences.

\- Historical archive.

\- Local news in one place.

Cons:

\- Government need to pay for hosting and support.

\- News Corp.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Its beyond me why election systems do not allow representation for miniority
> voters

Many election systems do. The systems used in the US and certain other poorly-
representative democracies don't, and those states score poorly in terms of
popular satisfaction with government compared to democracies with systems
where minorities within constituencies aren't systematically excluded from
representation by the structure of the electoral system.

------
kristianc
There probably is a future for high quality reporting like the FT, WaPo.

I’m probably more of a contrarian in that I think it’s no bad thing if
‘viewspapers’ which exist to make people mad, make false equivalencies and
write ‘People are saying’ type stories go to the wall.

It turns out the direct link between a paying customer and the provider of
news is actually an important one and that once you sever that link and treat
the reader as ‘eyeballs’ the quality does suffer.

~~~
ALittleLight
I think the negative news is the only kind that will survive the digital era
because it scales well. Not that many people care about local news, and so
that will die out because it can't reach more than a small number of people.

~~~
kristianc
The likes of the FT/Economist etc seems to scale well because it has an
engaged audience that is used to paying for it and sees the value in paying
fOr news.

~~~
bilbo0s
Which is fine, provided you are in the socio-economic group of people who
don't have to worry about whether or not the local mayor is ripping you off.
Or perhaps the city council is planning to put a halfway house on your block.
Etc etc etc.

WaPo or FT are just not going to cover local issues like they need to be
covered to keep an informed electorate.

~~~
kristianc
It might be that local papers are a bad fit for online, but I've never seen
them as directly competing with national news anyway. The paper versions of my
local certainly seem okay, and there's a lack of clickbait junk in them. The
online version on the other hand is a real crapshoot.

------
s_willster
In San Jose we have a new non-profit news organization
[https://sanjosespotlight.com/](https://sanjosespotlight.com/) that is doing a
great job covering local issues. The traditional newspaper in the area, The
Mercury News, has been laying off reporters and no longer does much original
reporting after being purchased by Alden Global Capital.

------
tim333
The actual Yahoo interview with video of Buffett
[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-sees-most-
news...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-sees-most-
newspapers-120000707.html)

------
bashwizard
Who the hell under 50 reads newspapers these days? Of course they're "toast".
If news sites are dying because of the ad decline, ad blockers and the
unwillingness of paying for news digitally then how on earth are newspapers
supposed to survive?

~~~
liability
Buffet is famous for his 'common sense' analysis, but I wonder how many young
people he has in his day to day social routine. To only realize only now that
newspapers are toast suggests that he's a bit slow on the uptake these days.

~~~
solveit
Who says he's realizing only now?

------
scarejunba
Online blinded-to-publisher exchange-based ads are the most democratic mode of
news support. Having them be user-relevant instead of content-relevant allowed
us to support content creators without doubling on the clickbait problem.

The death of online targeted ads is going to be sad for this. I can't think of
a cheaper way to pay for stuff. It's the only way I was able to see so many
incredible videos or pictures or articles.

My kids and I will be fine because I have money now but previous me would have
trouble in the coming all-paywall universe. We're going to be better informed
than anyone else and reinforce the positive feedback loop of wealth begetting
wealth.

Good luck to everyone else.

~~~
umeshunni
> Online blinded-to-publisher exchange-based ads are the most democratic mode
> of news support.

The trouble with this model is that publishers like to have editorial rights
over ads. A left-leaning publisher, for e.g, will want to be associated with
ads for an oil company or to generalize, not publisher wants to be associated
with any outrage-of-the-day brand.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
You can blacklist categories.

------
RickJWagner
I'll miss papers.

I was a paperboy and have fond memories of it. I also like to read things on
physical media.

On the upside, it's got to be good for the earth to not print papers every day
then trash them immediately after.

~~~
meruru
They were replaced with batteries that need to be recharged everyday and get
thrown out after a few years though.

------
douglaswlance
Why do we need centralized dissemination of information? How does that benefit
society? Top-down, command and control has always lead to non-optimal outcomes
throughout history.

In the absence of centralized journalistic outlets, we could have open access
to data/information and a reputation system that rewards objective, consistent
analysis.

Let the old systems die, so new ones can be developed. We should stop
subsidizing legacy systems.

~~~
gerbilly
> we will have [...] a reputation system that rewards objective, consistent
> analysis.

This is unlikely. We will get a reputation system that rewards sensationalism,
and polarization of viewpoints.

This is already happening in the newspaper industry, where they try to combat
it as best they can.

It's magical thinking to believe that technology and a laissez faire approach
will do anything but accelerate the decline.

~~~
douglaswlance
What we have now is no system, and unsurprisingly it rewards clickbait (i.e.
sensationalism and confirmation bias).

Instead, imagine a service built on blockchain where publishers (users who
generate content) were rewarded by readers (consumers of content) with tokens
that were spent by betting on the validity of said content.

If that content was later proven false, the user would lose their bet. If
proven true, the user would win the bet and have the ability to bet again.

Publishers with the most won bets would be ranked highest in terms of
reputation.

~~~
gerbilly
Sounds like American idol for news.

Who would decide if an article is 'proven true'? Some kind of majority vote?

In the jim crow era lots of people would have 'proven' some very unsavory
facts about a certain population of people.

Any substantive piece of journalism—beyond simple facts—can't be proven true,
because it's trafficking in viewpoints that can't be proven true in a binary
sense.

However from a reputable paper, that viewpoint is supported by at least two
independent sources, and argued fairly and in good faith.

~~~
douglaswlance
If 51% of users assent that a piece of information is true, then it would be
deemed true by the system.

Unfalsifiable information would not (and should not) be apart of the system.
It is wholly irrelevant for public consumption. Opinions would be relegated to
Facebook and Twitter.

~~~
gerbilly
> Unfalsifiable information would not (and should not) be apart of the system.

Then that's not human discourse. We are people, not robots.

~~~
douglaswlance
You would be free to share opinions outside of the system.

News is meant to be objective reporting of facts. Facts must be falsifiable.

------
devit
Why can't we have a "Spotify for newspapers"?

~~~
manigandham
Because nobody pays for news and publishers don't cooperate. This has been
tried 100s of times. See this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820)

~~~
fouc
I think the patreon model works well for content producers.

~~~
manigandham
News isn't valued the same and donations isn't a good business model for a
publisher that has full-time employees.

Very few content producers make anywhere near a full-time salary and many have
to do extra things like merchandise to augment income.

------
droithomme
The big papers post too much fake news. They have little legitimate value.
This and not mass copyright infringement or a shift to watching vloggers and
specialty social media groups regurgitate the days events is responsible for
the decline. Legitimate honest journalism does not exist for the most part.
People know when they are being lied to and do not take kindly to being played
for fools. No one is going to pay to read Pravda except for laughs. Yes there
are some exceptions that do real journalism. Some.

------
manigandham
One of the biggest effects on local news publishers was Craiglist. Local
classifieds were a major revenue stream.

~~~
bostonpete
Yes, ironically Craig Newmark is now praised as a champion of journalism
despite the fact that CL played a big role in the demise of newspapers. Not
saying he should be blamed though -- if it wasn't CL, it would've been someone
else, and very likely someone less scrupulous.

------
a_imho
What are the relevant numbers that support his claim? To me it seems sponsored
content is very much on the rise.

------
busymom0
I think this is an even bigger problem for local news papers than the major
mainstream news channels.

------
jayalpha
“It upsets the people in the newsroom to talk that way, but the ads were the
most important editorial content from the standpoint of the reader,” Buffett
said."

That is an interesting point and true for Newspapers. The opposite is true for
online newspapers.

~~~
nkozyra
> The opposite is true for online newspapers.

How do you figure? Money is money and every organization needs it.

~~~
wil421
I think he means for Newspapers the value was in the ads like classifieds and
sales information from local businesses.

Everyone seems to equally hate online ads. They don’t provide much value to
the consumer.

------
strikelaserclaw
Go digital and Concentrate on creating good content with a subscriber model,
there are many willing to pay for consistently well written articles.

~~~
perardi
Do we have examples of that _on the local level_?

It’s working OK on the national level. NYTimes, Washington Post, WSJ, the
obvious examples. They are either operating at scale, writing about national
issues that a huge cross-section of the population cares about, or they are
providing important business information.

Where is it working on the local level? I grew up near Peoria, and, well, I’m
not sure this will play in Peoria. Is there really a subscriber base for a
~400,000 person metro area? I am doubtful. My elderly parents still subscribe
to the actual physical newspaper (at a shockingly high price), but I swear
they are in it for the obituaries. Once the over 70 crowd dies off...

------
cprayingmantis
I just see this as part of the impending economic downturn. Ads are always the
first to go.

~~~
echelon
What signals are you using to determine this? How bad is it going to get?

~~~
seppin
(he doesn't know)

~~~
cprayingmantis
You're right.

------
siruncledrew
Why won't the US establish some sort of publicly funded national media agency?

Here's some countries that have publicly funded broadcasting networks, and
still rank above the US on the 2018 Press Freedom Index
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index)):

\- France:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_24](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_24)
\- UK: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC)
\- Netherlands:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Publieke_Omroep_(o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Publieke_Omroep_\(organization\))
\- South Korea:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Broadcasting_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Broadcasting_System)
\- Canada:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporation)

It seems like it is viable to establish a publicly funded institution
dedicated to national-local news. There is the Post Office and the DMV, so
couldn't there also exist small offices of reporters and journalists to
broadcast and publish news that is funded from taxes and public grants? Even
if it is not as granular as the Post Office, there would at least be an agency
responsible for the information and entertainment broadcast by the media
network.

Additionally, there could exist public-private relationships similar to how
the BBC operates BBC Studios, so there is still some incentive to run certain
programs "like a business", so to speak.

Some kind of national media agency could also help disseminate government data
to the public that is already being distilled and published by private news
corporations. For example, a lot of "newsworthy" information or background
comes from government sources, such as census data, economic data, and weather
data. Journalists read and distill openly published government information to
make it accessible to the public, and the government could do the same thing
to put more effort into the 'public presentation' side of the information they
produced.

There's no guarantee this would be 100% perfect; whether the news comes from
the government or a corporation there's always uncertainty in bias and truth.
Having a public news agency doesn't stop corporations from existing, it's just
another network but with a public safety net. If people want the news, then
deciding to use their tax dollars to fund public news is an available option.

The current state of public broadcasting in the US is pretty weak and
detached:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting#United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting#United_States)

Other than NPR and PBS, how often is public broadcasting (tv, internet, audio)
actually watched or listened to in the US? It seems pretty low.

Public broadcasting networks like the BBC and CBC could be nit-picked, but
overall they still produce some solid content that draws large audiences. BBC
One and BBC Radio 1 are consistently good and interesting, even for a non-
Brit.

~~~
chopin
Germany has this as well. It's massively overpriced and generally only an
outlet for the major ruling parties and the government. The sooner it dies,
the better. There's no real journalism involved, at all.

------
Causality1
The golden age of advertising started about ten years ago and we are starting
to see its decline about now. The golden age of advertising for users that is,
not advertisers. For over thirteen years we've enjoyed a web where power users
can get their content for free using adblocking while the ignorant casuals
supported our internet by looking at ads. I like to think of it as a symbolic
repayment for all the time we spend doing free tech support.

That golden time is coming to an end I fear. More and more users are blocking
ads, which has driven site operators to use more aggressive and more blocking-
resistant advertising. I can see a time coming soon where ads are so
intertwined with content it's effectively impossible to block them without
crippling your browsing experience.

~~~
IAmGraydon
With all due respect, you may want to recalibrate your crystal ball. Native
advertising was born a decade ago out of the very situation you describe.
Publishers now sell their editorial space just like ad space. Want an article
in Ars Technica about your product that’s disguised as a legitimate story?
Just pay them $75,000+ and you can have whatever you like. The net effect of
ad blocking is the complete corruption of editorial. The ads are so
intertwined with the content because they are the content.

------
keiferski
Serious question: why does society not push billionaires to put money towards
society-wide issues like this? Because it’s “bad business?”

To use Mr. Buffett as an example. His current net worth is 86.3 billion. If he
took 1 billion of that and created a fund to support independent journalism,
it could employ ~500 full-time journalists at $60,000 each (all-in cost)
purely on the interest (3% annual return.) Not to mention the fact that he
would likely receive donations and support from the public at large.

For comparison, The NY Times employs about 3,800 people. So, for a miniscule
amount of his net worth (of which the principal is unaffected), Mr. Buffett
could create an organization 1/8 the size of one of the largest newspapers in
the world.

So again, why do we give people like this a pass when they very clearly have
the ability to make a difference? Especially when they are publicly
complaining about the issue.

~~~
vasco
If society decided newspapers don't matter, why should a billionaire prop them
up? Not only that, but do you really want all of the news organizations to be
owned by billionaires?

~~~
torgian
Except it doesn’t need to be. Set up a trust, form a company and don’t be the
CEO. Trust sends money to the company for eternity, as long as the company
follows any rules that were set by that trust (journalists must follow a
specific code, etc).

It’s a great idea. Nobody will do it though because money.

