alt Hacker NewsFor-profit businesses tend to get bloated and eventually succumb to their own growth, one way or another.
Alternative: Start a newspaper who's goal is to be lean in operations, basically one person per role, and fund raise it from individuals, groups and government subsidies (if those exist in your country).
Seemingly people are able to fund things like Indie Games via Patreon subscriptions, surely for towns/cities with at least 100,000 people there would be a 1% of the residents interested in local news, right? 1000 people donating 15 EUR a month is already 15,000 EUR, assuming it only gets funded by monthly donations of individuals.
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I wonder if a newspaper co-op is a viable idea?
I do feel like there's a turn happening in the economy, or at least, some new scene growing. Or maybe I'm just finally becoming aware of it. That being, rejection of monopolized products.
I've never seen so much activity around Linux, for example. Or, I follow a content creator called SkillUp who just launched a videogames news site with revenue purely from subscriptions, and apparently they got way more subs than they expected. And as has been mentioned, lots of indie games have been getting funding lately, and a relatively small studio just crushed the game awards circuit.
That sounds a lot like a newspaper subscription. I subscribe to my local (physical) paper once a week for this reason.
The only reliable funding sources then seem to be local car dealerships and lawyers who want puff pieces / ads about themselves. I think we need to acknowledge that communities producing news about their region is a public good and thus should be funded with taxes.
Its almost like we should just publicly fund it from the tax people already pay.
How many people would 15,000 EUR employ in your area? That’s significantly below a living wage for one person in the US…
Maybe an incredibly lean organization could make it with 150,000 EUR? All digital, 3-4 really devoted employees.