A huge part of the problem with news media is that what people want is completely divorced from what makes good journalism.
Good journalism requires that you continue to pay despite the fact that they haven't been able to to release a piece in a while because they are still knee deep in three different big things that still haven't played out. Good journalism requires you to continue to pay despite the fact that the big story this month is about how you are a bad person who belongs in jail for arguably defrauding half your customers. Good journalism requires you to continue to pay when the article is about how your entire world view is wrong.
But consumers want content and drama and opinion. Consumers want the talking heads on Fox News telling them what they want to hear. Consumers want something to consume all day, every day, constantly, whenever they need to feed their doomscrolling addiction.
I actually wonder if tabloids have been hit as hard business wise as say the NYT has.
Ultimately not everyone wants that, and the audience that would would appreciate well researched and methodologically sound journalism are lacking in options at least partly because they aren't the biggest and thus most lucrative audience.
Nonetheless, even if there were outlets willing to serve such an audience, the problems which remain include "how do I know the money I pay for a subscription will actually fund good journalism instead of garbage". Especially garbage third parties pay to have fed to you.
It's less clear how to be readily transparent with that or to quantify it. How do I know reporters are seeing past their own biases? How do I know they will report on things which might impact their paycheck by making the owners of the company (or their owners in turn) look bad?
Also, once you've found such an outlet how can you finance funding several to try to cover over available blind spots and increase the benefits of horizontal reading?
Compulsion isn't desire. People are compulsively checking the news, Tiktok, Reddit etc. because thousands of smart engineers' full time job is to maximize how much time people spend consuming content. If you ask people if they want to spend 6+ hours doom scrolling every day, very few people would agree. Don't confound revealed preference with intrinsic desire. The former is just an assumption of an economic model.
In other words:
- Neutral front page with informative titles and headings that are designed to inform, not make me click. Articles written from the ground up with the inverted pyramid[^2] in mind.
- Remove most "psuedo-events"[^3] based "reporting", and if not analyse them critically.
- Pretend that the 24h news cycle doesn't exist. Update at most once a day.
- Do proper investigative journalism.
- Be conscious of the 5 filters outlined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent and actively resist them.
In short, the news should live up to the narrative of being the fourth estate it claims legitimacy from, instead of being an entertainment product serving the lowest common denominator in terms of audience.
(This will of course never happen.)
[^1]: With the possible exception of being forced to pay for my nation's public broadcaster through taxes.
[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
[^3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_event