Pay for Journalism
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I found a study this week from NiemanLab that says Most Americans don't pay for news, and don't think they need to. In a world where 50 years ago, you had broadcast television and print newspapers to find the news, your sources were limited. Now we live in an age where you can open your smartphone to tiktok and get as much "news" as you wish. That said, I think there is still something to say about paying for Journalism, which I would distinguish from just news. As we live in an era of US politics where the two major parties have radically differing viewpoints on how society is moving, I feel if you can afford to do so, find organizations / indie journalists that you resonate with and actual give you in-depth analysis on things going on in the world and how those events are shaping people and the culture around it and try to see if you can either donate or subscribe to their platforms.
For instance, I follow The Verge which as of 2 years ago started a subscription of $50 a year to access their full catalog of content. Splitting that up, that is a little over $4 a month, so if you can decided to skip going to Starbucks for one day a month, you can likely afford that sub. The Verge is a reasonablly sized org that I feel is in the crossroad of technology, policy, and culture that I have been following for over a decade and being able to financially say that their content matters is important to me. Do I like or read 100% of the content they make, of course not, but I do it for the content that takes time to produce rather than just "Apple's making a new iPhone".
Similarly, a lot of creators in various spheres have ways for you to financially support them. I follow Simon Willison and as of today I decided to start contributing to him via GitHub Sponsors. At $10 a month he offers a curated monthly newsletter of his AI coverage he makes on his site site every day. In Simon's case, all of his stuff on his website is free by default, but being able to chip in a portion of the money I earn to him or other indie creators / journalists is going to be able to make it such that they can keep doing that for the foreseeable future.
Sadly in my personal world, one of the spaces I feel has eroded in the past few decades is local news. Syracuse.com, my local newspaper, is owned by Advance Local Media, a conglomerate of 20+ "local" sites and papers / magazines. Their parent company, Advance Publications, owns 30% of Reddit, 13% of Charter Communications, and 4% of Warner Bros Discovery. That doesn't personally feel "local" to me. When the content on Syracuse.com is primarially high school sports that I have 0 personal interest, and it is dispersed with lifestyle content and other national stories from other avenues, that really decentivizes me from supporting it. If I want to go read national news, Reuters or the AP is a better place for that. Now I do think Syracuse.com does have people on their staff putting in the effort of making good journalism, but it sadly is a small portion of all of the things the site provides. What this all resolves to is at least for my local news, their incentives of what content they provide does not jive with me, so in that case I am not personally putting my money into sources like that.
Also, something of note across all three of these types of media, I personally am fine knowing that good journalism takes time. This is where I would separate standard news from journalism, where journalism is digging in to what lead something to happen, looking at the current effects, and forcasting out possible future ramifications. News is just saying something happened. In a world where our attention is tried to be grabbed every waking second, let's maybe stop and be better at consuming content. I'd be plenty happier knowing I am financially supporting good journalism rather than sites throwing garbage at me hoping to make a few cents on ad revenue. So if you are financially stable enough to pay for a $5 or $10 a month subscription to a website or paper or indie journalist, I highly reccomend start doing such.