I agree there is a huge opportunity for a trusted institution to do journalism. But who would anyone trust? The incentives in the media point towards pandering and outraging. Left to the shareholders a news organization is mandated to maximize short term profit in whatever way it can. So capitalism is out. Perhaps a benevolent billionaire could support such an effort? But again, who would trust him? Its a pikle.
there is a huge opportunity for a trusted institution to do journalism
There are new media organizations that do very good work, independently. But you have to look for them, and most people are too lazy to bother seeking out quality journalism when the garbage is forced in front of them every waking second by social media.
The other problem is that most of the good work is regional. WTTW in Chicago, The Texas Tribune in Texas, various public radio stations around the country. There's plenty of good journalism. But it's an effort to piece it all together.
I have looked, many times, and I have not been able to find a single institution I would trust to keep me broadly informed. I do not think the problem is lazyness. What would you recommend for US coverage?
Your last point is really good but there is still such a thing as a national political scene and federal government in the US, and it's a beat that we can expect a journalistic institution to cover. (despite an entire continent rolling up to those 535+ really important people).
This was a story about one of two people running for President, and an allegedly corruption-focused outlet wouldn't run it. Wtf. "Trump is worse" isn't a reason not to run that, we all know, it's everywhere all the time in all media.
This is among the oddest conversation for a startup focused board.
What is the market size ?
Recently there was a debacle in India where a news channel corrupted the ratings system.
In the discussions that followed, it turns out that the news industry pays peanuts.
If there is no real market, and just passion projects and idealism- then what’s going on?
Matter of fact India is a good example of what happens. Small independent teams making good news content and the vast majority of the news corrupted into ratings farms.
It's not like there can be only one news organisation. You could say that the incentives point to making a product that most people can afford but there are still companies making $50k watches and million dollar cars.
Sure the largest news organisations will always be serving up garbage for the unwashed masses but there should still be room for one optimising for trust.
I think you just need to find a way to align incentives. Capitalism can work just fine. The reason we're in this situation in part is because the skills and resources you garner for delivering journalism happen to overlap with those needed to deliver political tabloids. We don't worry about air conditioner manufacturers magically becoming insurance companies, because its hard to do so. So ultimately if you align incentives enough I think you can make it increasingly unlikely a specific 'truth seeking' organization will slide into tabloids. But I don't know the formula. It might boil down to re-baking the culture which awards good journalism and bootstraps itself off of valid credentialism.
