- the family trust of 22 year olds in Columbia Journalism School. Don’t take this too literally. Journalism school is a metonym for paying your dues.
- the husbands and wives of the older journalists
- millions of Boomers paying just four publications that are diversifying into media companies with video games and recipe lists, so not really journalism alone
Should journalism be philanthropic? It’s an interesting question. I’m not worried about AI writers as long as parents keep paying their kids’ rent to break into writing, and as long as New York and Los Angeles remain attractive places for young people to live. My point is that there is a status quo where journalism is already essentially a charity, so anything is possible, it is totally incorrect to characterize journalism as profit motivated, because if it were it would have been gone long ago, and it isn’t for lack of free labor, because most journalism is done for free.
> …who pays?
The status quo today is
- ProPublica’s donors
- the family trust of 22 year olds in Columbia Journalism School. Don’t take this too literally. Journalism school is a metonym for paying your dues.
- the husbands and wives of the older journalists
- millions of Boomers paying just four publications that are diversifying into media companies with video games and recipe lists, so not really journalism alone
Should journalism be philanthropic? It’s an interesting question. I’m not worried about AI writers as long as parents keep paying their kids’ rent to break into writing, and as long as New York and Los Angeles remain attractive places for young people to live. My point is that there is a status quo where journalism is already essentially a charity, so anything is possible, it is totally incorrect to characterize journalism as profit motivated, because if it were it would have been gone long ago, and it isn’t for lack of free labor, because most journalism is done for free.