It's not clear to me why journalism doesn't enforce its copyrights. Clearly, many outlets often issue reports on the same thing (e.g. coverage of a press conference). Still, the act of writing up the event yields a unique product (just as a novel about a UFO invasion is unique, regardless of how many other UFO invasion novels there are).
To protect journalism copyrights, scraping by aggregators must end. Doing so preserves the value of original journalism, since consumers do not have access to free news anymore.
Given the expenses associated with copyright enforcement, it might occur on a spectrum, with exclusives and investigations being protected more aggressively than 'press conference' content. Too, different companies could take different approaches to enforcement (the Disney approach vs the Sriracha approach).
And, newspaper/magazine/TV news shows could/should protect their overall organization and design as unique. For instance, the LA Times can argue that its combination of comics and puzzles is unique, as is its weighting of 'hard news' and 'soft news', editorial content, graphics, etc.
We appreciate the connection between informationally efficient markets and the current state of our media ecosystem. It's an important connection to make, since observing the underlying incentives that drive information discovery and distribution can tell us a lot about why we face the issues we currently face.
With the Grossman-Stiglitz Paradox, the assumption is that participants are only profiting by exploiting an informational advantage (as they do in financial markets by trading assets with inaccurate prices that don't yet reflect all information). The difficult work of acquiring an information advantage was rewarded by being able to exploit that advantage through trading, but more informed participants means it is more difficult to gain the advantage and the reward is smaller, so the work is not worth it.
In both traditional and social media, the difficult work of information discovery is rewarded with distribution (ad-supported revenue based on engagement metrics, as well as direct subscriptions). The more engagement with a piece of information, and the greater its reach, the more you could expect to earn from its consumption. As the internet and digital media democratized the distribution of information away from the hands of the publishers, the reward for distribution fell. The professional newsrooms that were doing the difficult work of high-quality reporting now had to compete with free-to-use social media platforms.
To reduce costs of professional journalism, newsrooms consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale, laying off staff and decreasing the number of voices contributing to the information environment. With less nuance in original reporting, the second-order commentary across social media also lost nuance. The health of our overall media environment deteriorated because the reward of distribution decreased. It doesn't make economic sense to do the hard work of discovering accurate information.
This is what we refer to as the paradox of abundance and distrust. With greater access to cheaper information, we would expect there to be a clearer picture of consensus reality. Yet, we have fragmented into distinct ideological communities that operate within their own bespoke realities, and distrust in the information shared across these groups has only increased since the 70s.
Fortunately, we no longer have to rely on distribution as the reward for producing high-quality reporting. Instead, we can now incentivize reporting based on its quality, accuracy, and merit, so journalists are actually rewarded fairly for the work that they produce. Without relying on distribution as the driver of earnings, we don't need to gatekeep access to information and paywall each individual source. Readers can pay a single subscription to the environment as a whole, and community-governed payout algorithms can determine how journalists are compensated for their work.
The only way to change an equilibrium outcome is to change the underlying incentive structures that produce it. We have discovered what the equilibrium is for our current media business models. It is time we address the fundamental problem at hand and create a new incentive structure entirely. One where the equilibrium is maximal informational efficiency.
I k ow the paradox well. One common counter argument is that it-like much in macroeconomics—treats everything as a commodity to merely transacted.
“Information” is some cases is its own entity and I. Other instances is a raw material for something else such as building informational context or god forbid even knowledge.
When informantion costs lower than paradox becomes real only if we think any application of information is also mere commodity. The media has collapsed not because of the paradox but because that we’re to lazy and or profit lingering to do the work to build useable information structures of context and knowledge
The Grossman-Stiglitz framing is exactly right, and it points to why Substack works: when readers pay directly for what they value, you restore the incentive to produce quality. The paradox breaks.
What we're building with VojVoj is the same logic extended to visual journalism — video and photo. The structural collapse you're describing hit text journalists hard, but it hit documentary filmmakers, photojournalists, and video reporters even harder. Their work is more expensive to produce, even harder to monetize through ads, and almost impossible to put behind a traditional paywall without killing distribution.
VojVoj lets visual creators earn directly from their audience through donations, paywalls, and subscriptions — the same model Substack has proven works for writers, applied to the people telling stories with cameras rather than keyboards. And when a reader discovers something they genuinely value and shares it, they earn a kickback from the transaction. That restores the distribution incentive from the bottom up — people share because it's worth sharing, and because sharing pays.
The road analogy holds. Someone has to pay to repave the asphalt. Platforms that tie income to transactions rather than attention are, slowly, figuring out how to do that.
News orgs should shift to the model used by Propublica, NPR, Public Television, and The Guardian. Provide news and/or investigative journalism for free and ask readers and philanthropists to support their mission.
It's not clear to me why journalism doesn't enforce its copyrights. Clearly, many outlets often issue reports on the same thing (e.g. coverage of a press conference). Still, the act of writing up the event yields a unique product (just as a novel about a UFO invasion is unique, regardless of how many other UFO invasion novels there are).
To protect journalism copyrights, scraping by aggregators must end. Doing so preserves the value of original journalism, since consumers do not have access to free news anymore.
Given the expenses associated with copyright enforcement, it might occur on a spectrum, with exclusives and investigations being protected more aggressively than 'press conference' content. Too, different companies could take different approaches to enforcement (the Disney approach vs the Sriracha approach).
And, newspaper/magazine/TV news shows could/should protect their overall organization and design as unique. For instance, the LA Times can argue that its combination of comics and puzzles is unique, as is its weighting of 'hard news' and 'soft news', editorial content, graphics, etc.
What's wrong with this?
We appreciate the connection between informationally efficient markets and the current state of our media ecosystem. It's an important connection to make, since observing the underlying incentives that drive information discovery and distribution can tell us a lot about why we face the issues we currently face.
With the Grossman-Stiglitz Paradox, the assumption is that participants are only profiting by exploiting an informational advantage (as they do in financial markets by trading assets with inaccurate prices that don't yet reflect all information). The difficult work of acquiring an information advantage was rewarded by being able to exploit that advantage through trading, but more informed participants means it is more difficult to gain the advantage and the reward is smaller, so the work is not worth it.
In both traditional and social media, the difficult work of information discovery is rewarded with distribution (ad-supported revenue based on engagement metrics, as well as direct subscriptions). The more engagement with a piece of information, and the greater its reach, the more you could expect to earn from its consumption. As the internet and digital media democratized the distribution of information away from the hands of the publishers, the reward for distribution fell. The professional newsrooms that were doing the difficult work of high-quality reporting now had to compete with free-to-use social media platforms.
To reduce costs of professional journalism, newsrooms consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale, laying off staff and decreasing the number of voices contributing to the information environment. With less nuance in original reporting, the second-order commentary across social media also lost nuance. The health of our overall media environment deteriorated because the reward of distribution decreased. It doesn't make economic sense to do the hard work of discovering accurate information.
This is what we refer to as the paradox of abundance and distrust. With greater access to cheaper information, we would expect there to be a clearer picture of consensus reality. Yet, we have fragmented into distinct ideological communities that operate within their own bespoke realities, and distrust in the information shared across these groups has only increased since the 70s.
Fortunately, we no longer have to rely on distribution as the reward for producing high-quality reporting. Instead, we can now incentivize reporting based on its quality, accuracy, and merit, so journalists are actually rewarded fairly for the work that they produce. Without relying on distribution as the driver of earnings, we don't need to gatekeep access to information and paywall each individual source. Readers can pay a single subscription to the environment as a whole, and community-governed payout algorithms can determine how journalists are compensated for their work.
The only way to change an equilibrium outcome is to change the underlying incentive structures that produce it. We have discovered what the equilibrium is for our current media business models. It is time we address the fundamental problem at hand and create a new incentive structure entirely. One where the equilibrium is maximal informational efficiency.
You seem smart. Wanna chat? I’m building a distribution model in line with aspects of this comment.
We appreciate the kind words. Would love to connect! Just DM'd
Agree with almost everything except that highways are a "public good." They are mostly the opposite.
So is this a complicated way of saying that quality news is a "public good", and so like other public goods, markets are bad at providing it?
I k ow the paradox well. One common counter argument is that it-like much in macroeconomics—treats everything as a commodity to merely transacted.
“Information” is some cases is its own entity and I. Other instances is a raw material for something else such as building informational context or god forbid even knowledge.
When informantion costs lower than paradox becomes real only if we think any application of information is also mere commodity. The media has collapsed not because of the paradox but because that we’re to lazy and or profit lingering to do the work to build useable information structures of context and knowledge
The Grossman-Stiglitz framing is exactly right, and it points to why Substack works: when readers pay directly for what they value, you restore the incentive to produce quality. The paradox breaks.
What we're building with VojVoj is the same logic extended to visual journalism — video and photo. The structural collapse you're describing hit text journalists hard, but it hit documentary filmmakers, photojournalists, and video reporters even harder. Their work is more expensive to produce, even harder to monetize through ads, and almost impossible to put behind a traditional paywall without killing distribution.
VojVoj lets visual creators earn directly from their audience through donations, paywalls, and subscriptions — the same model Substack has proven works for writers, applied to the people telling stories with cameras rather than keyboards. And when a reader discovers something they genuinely value and shares it, they earn a kickback from the transaction. That restores the distribution incentive from the bottom up — people share because it's worth sharing, and because sharing pays.
The road analogy holds. Someone has to pay to repave the asphalt. Platforms that tie income to transactions rather than attention are, slowly, figuring out how to do that.
Information is power. Not everybody likes to share
News orgs should shift to the model used by Propublica, NPR, Public Television, and The Guardian. Provide news and/or investigative journalism for free and ask readers and philanthropists to support their mission.
Only 16% of Americans pay for news though.
It’ll have to be enough.