I actually loved Jezebel, because it was maybe the only news site I encountered (as a dude not particularly in the know), that actually talked about women’s issues like my wife does.
People got very upset that they were opinionated, but that’s the whole point; why would you expect anything else on a site literally named Jezebel?
I definitely see some of the concerns that they have with this GARM stuff, but I also don’t particularly feel like I’ve seen much under the umbrella of the Gawker media group in general that I’d classify as “high-quality journalism”. There are decent articles here and there, but the standard for what qualifies to be published has always struck me as not particularly high.
I get that there’s a place for aggressive journalism, sometimes it’s exactly what’s called for. But Gawker always kind of felt like it was just aggressive for its own sake in order to attract eyeballs. Not to say that they never shed light on anything important, but a lot of the time it seemed like they were tilting at windmills just trying to keep that energy up.
Advertising really doesn’t seem like a great long-term solution for journalism’s funding, though. Nobody really wants ads, and people are increasingly able to just not interact with them. At the same time, nobody wants a paywall either.
Government funding, maybe? Some big public foundation? We certainly need something to prop journalism up financially or it’s just going to keep getting worse.
Honestly I’m fine paying a subscription if the content is good. There’s one local news source that’s free that I’d be happy to pay a reasonable amount to view.
There are plenty of small independent publications and online journalism outlets that survive off donation drives, subscription patrons, and volunteer citizen journalists. There are even totally independent citizen journalists that report on community sources. Unfortunately, honest journalism is something that society currently has a limited carrying capacity for, but that capacity is not zero.
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