I thought this was an excellent, thoughtful article that made a number of important points. I personally think that news reporting started going downhill in the 1980s when corporate conglomerates began buying up all the newspapers (hontonoshijin, I mourn the loss of the wonderful Arkansas Gazette with you). I think it is inescapable that whoever pays the bills skews the news. So, yes, fears of what government ownership or subsidization might do are not unfounded (though I, too, really like the UK Guardian). But what we have now is corporations deciding what we should read. I don't see that as any better at all.

One thing I find interesting is how entitled people feel to something they're used to getting for "free" without looking below the surface to see what the hidden costs are. A newspaper (or anything else) that is mainly paid for by advertising is not free! We pay for that advertising every time we buy something from that advertiser. The cost of the marketing is built into the product or service. If corporations are running the show now, it's because we buy their stuff. In some cases, we don't have much choice--like with buying a car, for example. But in numerous other situations, we do have a choice whether to buy something from a local merchant or from a corporate outlet. Whenever I have a choice, even if I have to spend a little more, I'll buy from a local merchant, especially if it's one that is providing something I really want to support--locally raised meat, for example, on small farms that treat their animals with care and kindness.

If we want objective, hard-hitting, on-the-ground, investigative reporting (and I agree that this is very important AND that it can be very expensive) and we don't want to be fed whatever corporations want us to read, my opinion is that we need to pay for it through subscriptions, donations, whatever. If we start paying for what we really want instead of indirectly through purchasing corporate goods, maybe we can come up with a new business model that will give us high quality sources of information, however it is delivered (I like the layout of a print newspaper, yes, but hate the thought of all that paper waste; I do think that many online newspapers could improve their layout). Instead of looking to others, we need to look to ourselves, IMHO.

Hahaha, you gave me some great laughs this morning! Thanks! Maybe YOU should be writing for television, pull it out of its doldrums.

Myself, I'm one of those insufferable assholes who doesn't own a TV. But it's not that I don't watch television shows. I rent, download, or buy the shows I want to watch. The ads and those, yes, aneuryism-inducing pop-ups, just got to be to effing much. Beyond annoying. Thoroughly killed any desire I had to watch anything.

Times are changing and business models are changing and I personally think that's a good thing. They need to change. I'm sick of corporations and advertisers deciding what I get to watch, read, know about, see, buy, WTF-ever. At least if I'm spending my own money (and it's odd to me that people don't seem to get the fact that they pay for advertising, it's just a hidden cost instead of an upfront one), I get to choose what I want. Not what some insular ad exec thinks 24-year-olds want. Which would not be me. No offense to 24-year-olds. I WAS one once.

It's like the music industry, which was so loathe to change their business model until they almost lost the whole game to file-sharing. Turns out I wasn't the only one to realize that a lot (not all, of course) of albums had one or two good songs on them, that a lot of older songs/albums were impossible to find for any price, that it was beyond irritating that the music producers wanted to charge almost as much to buy a song as an entire album, that talented, lesser known artists' work was hard to come by. I'm happy to pay for a song that I like. I want to support the music industry, but I primarily want to support the artists and the necessary production. I don't want to support some exec's off-scale lifestyle. And I feel the same way about TV producers.

The Internet has changed everything. No one is going to make money the way they used to. I pay extra for everything I can to avoid getting advertised to because I'm sick to death of it (I think a special spot in hell should be reserved for those who inflict animated ads on us, making it impossible to read what I set out to read, but that's just my opinion). And as I say, I want to make my own choices. I don't see it as a bad thing to pay directly for goods and services we want. Advertising doesn't make things free. It just restricts our choices and we pay in other ways.

Thank you! I will check out the sites you posted and get them bookmarked :)

Cheers!