When I spend money on anything, I do it because it’s worth it to me to get the product, and the same goes for news and journalism. What I’ve seen over the last ten years on line is that journalism has exploded and there are people and organizations out there who are earning respect and credibility, which is a slow process but it sure is an honest one. That’s how it should be done. Pre-rewarding journalism through a vast indirect point system, kind of turns my stomach. I much prefer to retain my choice of where to put my dime based on who is putting out consistently good, pertinent journalism that is important to me and my life.

I also took issue with the strange notion that so called non-professionals should be automatically excluded (and with a bit of a sooner the better attitude too). I strongly disagree and don’t see any particular reasoning behind that idea. The value of any individual writer’s work is up to me to decide and I’m not at all impressed with how widely read they may be, that’s really of no importance in terms of finding value in their way of seeing and writing about things.

Like anything else that starts with little more than passion and serious intent, it often takes years of hard work getting little in return before a business of any kind begins to gain respect and recognition. When they consistently provide something of good quality that customers find valuable, things change and the money starts coming in. The internet, even more than street level store fronts, provides talented people with an even playing field and gives our future journalistic rising stars a shot that’s been denied many people who simply could never hope to put their good work out where anyone could see it. I say let those who earn our journalistic respect earn our news dollars, and let those dollars go out like they should, by the free choice of the buyer.

Something else I see happening already is that the way we choose our news providers may be a lot different than the old concept of big news organizations dominating the news media. I can clearly see much value in the idea of providing subscription services where a staff of readers comb the vast sources of news out there and put together the best of picks from a large variety of news organizations without regard to loyalty or being tied into only taking news from certain sources. If I subscribe to such a news feeder service, they could pay into a fund such as you describe which allows them a certain number of articles per week or month or what have you. This would allow services that provide consistently excellent reporting to me, to save me a lot of time trying to hunt down what I’m interested in and instead serve it right to my inbox every day, even taking advantage of the ability to provide stories that cater to my particular interests. I would pay for that, it would be worth it. ICH does that now, albeit not at all formally, but I’ve already found it very handy and I appreciate it and donate to them.

So there are more ways to go about this than placing another vague financial obligation on the public to get something that may or may not be of any value to them.

But whether the public is stupid or uncaring – I’m getting older and don’t have time to sugarcoat their pablum.

Just pick you up on one point — filter out the pros from the amateurs? Why? It’s the so-called “pros” who’ve got us into this mess. And why not reward those who get the most news hits irrespective of their status. Then we would really see which pros could cut the mustard and earn a crust and which “amateurs” were the ones people wanted to read and listen to. This whole “professional journalist” ethos stinks to high heaven and we shouldn’t be looking to support and sustain it.

In the UK I belong to an organisation called ALCS which rewards writers (novels, plays, etc) not on their individual creations but on the general spread of their creative output, and ALCS (Authors Licencing & Collection Society) is simply that — a conveyancing operation which distributes the money and performs no role as a censor or arbitrator.

As well as unleashing a catastrophic loss of life, Cyclone Nargis appears to have been fiercest in Burma’s main rice-growing region, the Irrawaddy delta.

Full details of the damage are not yet clear, say World Food Programme officials, but the growing fear is that millions of tons of salt water have flooded onto the precious rice paddies, making them unfit for planting for some time.

The UN agency said that it was not yet known whether Burma, a key rice exporter, would be able to meet commitments to supply the staple to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and has warned of “potentially serious effects”.

Now the media can’t say this storm that 100,000 lives have been lost is because of climate change but I can.

Figure 3. The spatial pattern of surface air temperature anomalies for April 2008, expressed with respect to the average for 1979 to 2007, shows unusually high temperatures over the Arctic Ocean and peripheral seas.
—Credit: From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy Climate Diagnostic Center

Lindsay cautions that sea ice conditions are now changing so rapidly that predictions based on relationships developed from the past 50 years of data may no longer apply.
Could the North Pole be ice free this melt season? Given that this region is currently covered with first-year ice, that seems quite possible.
http://nsidc.org/
There is the web site click on arctic sea ice news. New reports once a month. In September how will it play out well something like what’s a few bears? How about what’s a few crops Worldwide?

Didn’t a Dad recently video the conditions at his son’s dilapidated barracks? With a few million video-armed citizen journalists we might have a chance at free honest news, by the people for the people.

If you think today’s media and government are in bed with generals you should have been around during the JFK assassination when it was frighteningly obvious.

Since at least the days of Ben Franklin, newspapers have published lies and propaganda, the press has always been a prostitute.

As for the “211 million internet users in the United States” that needs to be broken down and explained further. The link says 49.9 broadband subscribers. The largest percentage of those 211m “users” are libraries, businesses, schools – not private personal home users. At home folks using the net for political news and enlightenment are a small portion – after subtracting gamers, porno, assorted goofballs taping themselves, and others not interested in news.

Looking on any list for the top searches and the majority is Britney Spears, Kobe Bryant, Uma Thurman, Speed Racer, Amy Winehouse, Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana, Dick Cheney naked woman in sunglasses, etc.

And now you want us to finance more or less the same liars or their lineage and protégé on-line rather than in print. I can hardly wait for that end user fee to show up on my next bill.

“…the distributing agency would be a private, non-profit association of composers, artists and publishers, regulated by the government.”

Oh yes, government regulated non-profits. As if those billion dollar cliques have no scandals, hubris, nepotism, and ideological agendas.

Getting screwed to the tune of $100 a year isn’t what I call a bargain.