Serious question: What would be the funding model? It seems like the number of people willing to pay for journalism is fairly small, though nowhere near zero.
Some kind of micro transaction model sounds appealing to me. I‘d pay 5 to 25 cents to read articles from different sources. I already subscribe to local newspapers but can’t afford to subscribe to the many I read from here on Lemmy.
The pirate bay guys tried to spin up somthing called flattr a decade or two back. You put in a fixed amount per month, then when you engage with media you like you click a “flattr” button and that media gets a slice. You could also setup different people to always get a cut. Say you put in $10/month and flattr 100 things? Everyone gets 10 cents. $100/month? $1 each.
It didnt catch on, likely due to processing fees, but I always liked that idea. Signing up for dozens or hundreds of patrons/ghosts/etc is just too hard to manage and fund, but if I and several million other people could hand out pennies a month, it might really matter to small artists/journalists.
Maybe now with some countries that allow payments with no fees, it might work.
