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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, September 8-14, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If people were a great deal better at coordination, would they refuse to use news sources which are primarily supported by advertising?
I don't think "refusing" news sources is helpful. Even a bad newspaper gives some perspective on some topics that you won't find elsewhere.
The whole idea of "news sources" is problematic. It assumes a certain 20th century model of learning about the world. If you want to get really informed about a topic it often necessary to read primary sources. I don't get scientific news from mainstream media. I either read the papers, discussion on LW or blogs by scientists.
When I see a claim that I find interesting and where I don't know it's true I head over to skeptic.stackexchange and open a question. The website is no newspaper but it also serves the purpose of staying in contact with world events.
Advertising is just one biases among many. If I watch a news video at German public television that's payed for by taxpayer money, the a German public television network pays a production company for that video. Some of those production companies also produce PR for paying customers.
A lot of articles in newspapers get these days written by freelance journalists who aren't payed very well and can be hired for other tasks. So even if the newspaper wouldn't make it's money by serving corporate interest the individual journalist might still serve corporate interests.
Wikipedia illustrates that we are actually quite good at coordination. Much better than anyone would have expected 20 years ago. It just doesn't like like we would have expected. Cultural development isn't just more of the same.
But reading it takes time that one could spend on something else.
If you make an utility calculation than the prime concern is about whether it makes sense to learn about a topic in the first place. If you do decide to inform yourself about a topic than you have to choose among the sources that are available. If you really care about an issue than it often makes sense to read multiple perspectives.
It quite easy to read government funded Al Jazeera, a commercial newspaper by a publically traded company that makes money via advertising and network driven community websites like Stackexchange or Wikipedia.
In a pluralistic society all those source of information can exist besides each other. If you don't like corporatist news sources there are a lot of alternatives these days.
That sounds like a good way to end up with more paywalls.
There would definitely be more paywalls. The question is whether it would be a net loss.
Would the quality of information be better? Advertising gets paid for one way or another-- would no-advertising news (possibly even no-advertising media in general) be a net financial loss for consumers?
Look at the history of cable TV. When it appeared it was also promoted as "no advertising, better shows".
I would argue for the existence of a treadmill effect on these things.
Although this may not have been true at the beginning, it arguably did grow to meet that standard. Cable TV is still fairly young in the grand scheme of things, though, so I would say there isn't enough information yet to conclude whether a TV paywall improved content overall.
Also, it's important to remember that TV relies on the data-weak and fairly inaccurate Nielsen ratings in order to understand its demographics and what they like (and it's even weaker and more inaccurate for pay cable). This leads to generally conservative decisions regarding programing. The internet, on the other hand, is filled with as much data as you wish to pull out regarding the people who use your site, on both a broad and granular level. This allows freedom to take more extreme changes of direction, because there's a feeling that the risk is lower. So the two groups really aren't on the same playing field, and their motivations for improving/shifting content potentially come from different directions.
Yes I think so because journalism is time-consuming and expensive. You also have to have the right people on the right stories so that you get the best expression of what happened. Then you can back that up with commentary and opinion which in this day and age tends to end up all at once. I think the better option is to believe in people and their unique perspective. If you follow a writer or a journalist and you like their work that is a better system than believing in an institution which is more faceless. If I am covering a story on an oil spill in the gulf on The Cameron Cowan Show and then I take an ad from BP my viewers are going to wonder if I an going to continue to cover the spill with such tenacity and they will flee from me if I don't. People can vote with their feet and dollars with individuals far more than companies. Ergo, I would not take that ad to keep my loyal watchers and seek ads somewhere else. This logic is not used at any news outlet right now because bills have to be paid and there is far less backlash.
If people were a great deal better at coordination I suspect advertising wouldn't exist at all.