The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism
We as an industry have kicked around &quot;how to save journalism&quot; for years now. Here&#x27;s what I&#x27;ve got:<p>If you want journalism, sponsor endowments for journalists to report in certain areas, like foreign policy or local government. At the same time, and critically, sponsor endowments for editors to put a tight reign on these journalists.<p>Completely decouple good journalism for hunting-for-eyeballs. Then let the content curators and aggregators make some kind of business out of it, if they can.<p>In the past, whenever we consumed quality content, it was always there because some commercial interest paid for it to be there. Somehow we&#x27;ve forgotten about that. There has always been a difference between what the commercial interests wanted and what quality content demanded, but in the past the feedback loop was so slow and diffuse that good content happened anyway. This is no longer the case.<p>So if you want good content, you&#x27;re going to have to completely decouple it from commercial interests -- and apply rigorous quality standards as well. Good editors are sorely missing in modern content creation, and everybody seems to want to take the old models, including ad-sponsored material, and make them work. They will not work.