Wednesday, May 20, 2020

The Importance of Paying for Your News

I categorized this post as 'Newsletters' but its more about news in general. There are hundreds to thousands of places you can get news today, many of which are misleading, false, and outright lying. Others are less investigative journalism and more opinion pieces. The point is that you have many, many places to get news and there are a great number of high-quality news sources out there. Right now times are tough with tens of millions of Americans losing their jobs due to the economic impact of COVID-19. Money is tight. If you have the means, however, please, please, please pay for your news.

The major network news sources, such as MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, all get their money from their wide reach of sponsors and advertisements. Are they great news sources? Not in my opinion. Sure, there's some news that comes through, but so much of it is opinion pieces that offer no real input to everyday Americans. These sources have drastically cut and scaled back their investigative journalists to save money and build profit. The major source of investigative journalism in this country used to be the local TV channels and local newspapers. But so many of these have shuttered in the last few years that investigative journalism has suffered a steep decline.

Why? Why the deep decline in local news? High-quality, real local news requires money. Journalists need to be paid. When people stop their newspaper subscriptions in favor of free online "news", newspapers and local TV stations are forced to layoff journalists. If you want a country with high-quality journalism, you must contribute. Stop heading to the free opinion channels and websites that have the ability to receive vast amounts of money through advertising. Stop using browser tricks to read more than the "3 free articles per month" you are allowed by the paywall. Quality journalism requires your contributions and if you have that ability to contribute, please do so!

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