Economic Models of Journalism

Did you see a blip? Me neither. My initial reaction is that this is like steering the car from the back seat. Rather than creating a constructive business model to fund good journalism, the governments are mostly creating a penalty system for bad journalism. However the more I think about it, the more I like it, even if I didn't think of it first. (My favored approach would instead focus on penalizing the reputations of the sources of fake news with a MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) system.) So I guess I now want to extend my ontology of economic models for journalism:

History of Journalism

(first entry pair is like a header (though this is the official list header))

Economic model of news propagation (roughly in chronological order)

What went wrong (or right)

Espionage

Originally only the king could afford it and (possibly) benefit from it. Still in use and still failing a lot of the time. (Interesting recent failures mentioned in Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.)

Subscriptions

Can you believe that people would pay to read the truth? Problem here is that it's really hard to compete with free and especially these days the Web can stuff all your input channels with free stuff. Often worth even less than you paid.

Advertising

Worked pretty well as long as you could see which parts were which, but that's mostly where it's collapsed these days as advertisers have gotten better and better at disguising (and thus discrediting) their pitches. But the Internet also hurt this model by allowing intermediaries like the google and Facebook to split the advertising revenue completely away from the journalists.

Public Service

The Golden Age? Basically funded out of the monopoly profits when the governments could auction off the limited amount of bandwidth. Mandated as a public service in those days, but the Internet destroyed the scarcity.

Disaster Porn

The dregs of the advertising model, with CNN now the leading practitioner. Not really new when you remember the long history of "If it bleeds, it leads", but most of the time it does not align with all the news you actually need to know. Great time killer, however.

Propaganda

Probably deserves to be higher on the list because it has deep historical roots, but propaganda has become much more "scientific" in recent years. FAUX used to be the leading practitioner, but the business seems to be in a state of transition now. Can you imagine worse than FAUX? How about Pravda in it's "glory days"? (That's why the Russians are so good at reading the news sideways.

Charity

Lots of systems floating around. Works better for comics than journalism? For example https://existentialcomics.com/ is funded via Patreon.

Anti-Fake News

The new model of this story. Fundamentally a punitive model? Too soon to say if it's going to go wrong or right. However I'm fundamentally opposed to censorship and have to predict this model is going to be abused. Especially when it starts clashing with the official government propaganda channels.

Solution-Driven

As far as I know, this is an imaginary model that doesn't exist anywhere, but I'm including it here in case you can point at an example. My idea is for the news (as a story or video) to be followed by some solution projects to help with the problems the journalists are telling us about. When enough donors agree to support a particular project, then the money gets released. A fraction would go to pay for the journalism and the journalists would also follow up on how well the solution worked (or didn't). I even imagine a CSB (Charity Share Brokerage) as the intermediary to handle the money. Do you have a URL for anything like this? (But Kickstarter et alia are not remotely close.)

What did I miss?

I think I covered most of the major economic models for journalism and related services, but you're welcome to differ. I hope it's more than a flash in the pan. (Like usenet? (But I could probably shoehorn usenet into the charity model?))

(Watch out for trolls bearing links.)

Wikipedia to the dogs

Version 0.3

Wikipedia to the Dogs?

Mostly just feeling like summarizing my increasingly negative feelings about Wikipedia and noting why the good idea is coming to naught. Insofar as it's an Internet-based story and the Internet is so dominated by America, I nearly put it in the decline of America blog, but the top leadership of Wikipedia is quite British and the goal is quite international, so...

My last involvement with Wikipedia was a couple of months ago when there was controversy about the paid editors. I'm increasingly convinced that the entire NPV (Neutral Point of View) thing is a joke, but it's (intuitively) obvious (to the most casual observer) that an editor who is paid by a company that is related to the topic of an article cannot even pretend to be impartial or neutral. My own involvement was mostly in voting on the proposed solution, but at the same time I suggested ways to strengthen it. My basic position was that it couldn't be eliminated, but the best approach would be to make it visible in public, with a more serious public sanction for violations. The policy called for disclosure of such financial ties, but I felt that the disclosure should be made visible with a small annotation on the top of the article, whereas the detection of a violation (such as paid editing that is not disclosed) would result in a big permanent warning attached to the article in question.

At that time, no one at Wikipedia showed detectable interest. Upon reflection, I can imagine that they were worried about damaging their key assets: integrity and credibility. Integrity is about knowing the truth, but acknowledging paid editing has to cast a shadow on the how the truth may become slanted. In contrast, credibility is about being trusted to tell the truth, which would be weakened every time someone noticed a paid editing tag... However, those assets are valuable rather beyond Wikipedia, even including all journalists.

This week's unfunny interaction at Wikipedia involved spammer abuse of Wikipedia, which is obviously a successful but evil financial model. Some of the 419 scams include URLs that are exploiting the integrity and credibility of some website to fool more suckers. An excellent technical countermeasure is obvious, but as far as I know, not in use. (Perhaps some websites are using it, and therefore the spammers never use those URLs?) The countermeasure would be to add a warning to the cited webpage, something to the effect of "If spam led you here, you are NOT about to get big money after you 'help' by paying the scammer with some 'trivial' fee." The warning should obviously include a link to a more specific warning about that category of scam.

The situation is actually worse and better as regards Wikipedia compared to the most common targets, which are news websites. It's worse because the spammers could easily vandalize Wikipedia to support their scams, adding some juicy details to spice up the bait. If the scammers thought it was worth the effort, I'm sure they could add the bait a few weeks in advance, even with a citation to a plausible-looking external website that the scammer has set up. However, the Wikipedia situation is better in that anyone who receives the spam could pop over to Wikipedia and add a warning. Oh, wait. It just got worse again. The spammer could pop over and revert the article to remove the warning.

Now we're back to technical solutions that are (intuitively) obvious (to the most causual observer) and yet another suggestion that I've offered to Wikipedia a number of times over the years, always without detectable interest. There should be a convenient option to "Add a temporary warning" to an article. In a good implementation, it would let you paste in a copy of the spam and its headers, and you would categorize the scam and specify how long the warning should last. The warning would be temporary, but not easy to remove, so the spammer can't just pop over and zap it. Instead of fooling suckers, the potential suckers would see (for the next week or two) a warning such as (from this week's example): "Warning, if you received email claiming that you are about to receive a $10 million VISA card, it is a 419 scam", and including a link to the appropriate article on such scams.

My little story actually begin when I received such a spam this week (but only the latest of many times over the past years) and I added a warning (manually, since there is no such tool) to the spammer's Wikipedia article. A few hours later, I noticed that it had been reverted, so I looked at that person's page and discovered that the reverter of my warning was trying to become some kind of administrator or editor on Wikipedia. Therefore I went to the election page and said that I had to oppose the promotion because I was suspicious of anyone who seems to be helping spammers. I also included a short explanation of the scam in question and the obvious suggestion. That vote was quickly deleted, too, on grounds of some kind of club violation.

My new message to Wikipedia: "Sorry, but if you Wikipedia fools want to support spammers, you can shove your club where the sun don't shine. In addition, I hope the spammers pwn your children's computers to thank you for your contributions to their ongoing success."

I think the funny part is that I really like the idea of Wikipedia and think that broader and more democratic participation would improve the quality and value of Wikipedia. Contributing more to the joke is the oft-repeated claim that Wikipedia wants more support, but the punchline is that I was threatened in some manner for expressing my concerns. "Follow the money" is often a good way to figure out people's real motivations, so I still think my concerns are legitimate. Philosophy is nice but sound economic models are important, too.

Kind of a minor footnote, but maybe it's a karmic coincidence. Most of my involvement with Wikipedia has been to make minor grammatical corrections and ask a few questions on the so-called Talk pages (though perhaps this was the first time I was threatened for writing). However a few days ago I noticed some omissions on a Japanese page and I actually reserved a couple of books that contained the missing data. After this little episode, I dropped by the library and cancelled the reservations without opening the books.

I should make a boilerplate for this closing apology, but... I'm sorry about the need to moderate the comments, but unlike Wikipedia, I am strongly determined not to support any spammers. I welcome your comments and generally approve them within a day. I even prefer comments from which I learn something, which most often means critical comments, even if there's some sharpness in the tone.

Free speech versus moderated comments

Version 0.5

Free Speech Versus Moderated Comments

I want to clarify my position on free speech in light of my settings for moderation on all blogger comments. I think there are several elements of confusion, especially about the use of the word "free".

First, let me be clear that I strong approve of free speech in the sense of freedom to say whatever you want. That means I am STRONGLY inclined to approve EVERY comment or reaction submitted in response to any of my blogs. Except for unsolicited commercial spam, I am unable to recall any comment that I did not approve, and I have even approved a couple of replies that came dangerously close, but which seemed sincere enough and strongly relevant to the topic of the comment.

Second, I want to thank you for disagreeing with me so strongly that you actually change my mind. It doesn't happen very often (except for corrections of typos or silly mistakes), but it is possible and I really want to learn about my misconceptions, incorrect reasoning, and especially about any false evidence I am relying upon or unknown and important evidence that I should consider. Even if you disagree with me vigorously, I want to approve your post. However, if you are sincerely trying to change my mind, you should focus on new evidence or analytic flaws in my reasoning.

Third, if you just call me a bunch of vile names, I'm just going to approve your post so I can hold you up and wave you around as effectively discrediting and disproving yourself because you are unable to provide anything more substantive. I actually think emotional writing can show sincerity and there is even research showing it is more persuasive, but I insist that I am an essentially reasonable person and I'm quite happy to say something along the lines of "This fellow strongly disagrees with me, but he is contradicting himself and can therefore be dismissed as some sort of liar without even trying to figure out which side of his own words he actually believes." That's just one example, but I'm frequently surprised by how inconsistent people are... There might be some limit of angry ranting where I would just decide not to approve the comment, but I'm having trouble seeing where it would be, because the crazier someone gets in their disagreement, the more reasonable I feel and the happier I am to use their craziness as evidence of my reasonableness.

Fourth, I want to address the confusion about "free speech", which is NOT related to free beer. Being able to speak freely has almost nothing to do with the actual financial costs of speaking, especially in these days of exceedingly cheap Internet-based publishing. I am moderating these comments because of unpaid COMMERCIAL speech, specifically the scams that are being "advertised" by spammers. Okay, I admit that I don't have many readers, but I am NOT going to help the spammers in harassing them as the spammers desperately search for the tiny number of suckers who can be fooled into sending money. If you are a spammer, your comments will NEVER be approved by me and I will do everything I can think of to put you out of business. I am NOT saying we can convert spammers into decent human beings, but I do believe that without the money, they will crawl under less visible rocks.