Americans still have faith in local news − but few are willing to pay for it

10 rntn 3 6/9/2025, 5:07:44 PM theconversation.com ↗

Comments (3)

duxup · 3h ago
The issue on the web where "I don't want to pay." and "On noes people who do pay are terrible." is inescapable.

Yet as a whole it's what people seem to choose it time and again.

I choose to pay / support news orgs, software, etc, but most seem to not wish to.

armchairhacker · 3h ago
Many people don’t have money. Moreover, many people are careful what they spend money on, because there are many seemingly-useful services; while a news subscription doesn’t cost much, if they spent money on everything that seemed as useful, it would be a lot.

Presumably many people want others to be informed (and want local news to exist in general), some of whom do have money. Maybe the news could introduce a way for those people to pay extra, where the extra proportionally lowers the price for everyone else. If enough people pay enough extra, the baseline price would $0, then the news would be freely available online and maybe distributed in paper. Also make it a trend to post gift codes to social media for people who are desperate or thrifty.

PaulHoule · 3h ago
If lies are free than the truth has to be to. In moderate-sized cities there is not enough news to justify a daily paper but weeklies and web-based papers have better economics and fill the gap ne can be financed with advertising.