I am a strong proponent of strengthening news organizations and actively
subscribe to a couple due to their good work.
Just a couple thoughts on a quick read of your proposals...
the different needs people have related to news content
I'm kind of concerned that what people *need* related to news content,
versus what they want / click on are divergent.
Clickbait and outrage dominate, long form is a dying breed. People seem
to be too often ill-informed, and worse, overly confident in what
they've seen / read.
I wonder if Canada generally, could come up with a program whereby
library users (maybe with an app?)
Libraries are great and seemed to have done a good job of "keeping up
with the times", but I suspect they are both underfunded and under-utilized.
I don't think I know of anyone that actually uses our local library
system (and it's a shame).
Trying to increase usage of these fine institutions is a steep hill,
like trying to get funding for legitimate news providers.
Now we have 2 problems...
2/ could opt in to pay a small fee for 'enhanced' library news
access, whereby people can select to some extent where they prefer
some of that fee to go, which media outlets, and maybe track usage,
maybe especially to help out smaller media with some consistent
income...
With the small number of library users, I don't think this would make a
dent in funding news, even if 100% of active users partook in the scheme
and the fee was more than "small".
Also, I think most "smaller media outlets" have been purchased by the
larger ones now. At least the community news gatherers.
And the smaller, independent ones - they can already be accessed by
approximately 100% of the populace via the internet; unsure how
libraries can be a part of that other than discovery.
Now I'm just getting depressed / despondent.
I think there may have been a chance to help the Canadian news providers
a long time ago, by disallowing consolidation of ownership.
Now, with online ad brokers, social media, etc., so much potential
income has been lost, probably forever, things are looking bleak.
We probably need to get people willing to pay for news - that we're all
quite accustomed to getting for free now.
However, since people are quite willing to pay for music and movies / TV
via online subscriptions despite a decade or two of those being mostly
seen as free via torrents, etc., can that shift in attitude work for news?
Perhaps, like music consumption moving from free mp3s to paid streaming,
it can work.
It requires convenience above all, followed by reasonable pricing.
I just dunno how we're going to tackle this issue.
My 2ยข on the matter...
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