Does it give you access to the full content? Or just link through to the article (which may be behind a paywall)?

I would be willing to pay for content, but not for an aggregator.

Ground news is a YC alum isn't it?

It's almost certainly going to get enshittified eventually, but more than that, it purposely pushing a false "Left vs Right" narrative about news. That's part of the problem.

Also the way they summarize every story into just a few bullet points (which, if it isn't already written by AI, surely will be) IMO is actively downplaying important issues, in an attempt to defuse false energy in reporting of less important issues. Artificially downplaying serious stuff is as detrimental as artificially overplaying non-serious stuff.

The Google Pixel "news" feed has the same problem now that it does AI "summaries"

Like it's great that they aggregate a lot and show you articles from publications you wouldn't otherwise see, but I just cannot trust them in the future.

> ... shows me how factual each source is and which way they lean politically.

Fact-checkers and whatever you call people that gauge political biases aren't impartial sources of information. Someone pays their bills and those people typically have agendas besides delivering objective truth.

I'm not suggesting that paying monthly fees or paywalls are a solution to the problem either.

The real solution is to stop reading the news IMO. Let these companies go out of business and get replaced by something better. If one must read the news, just use an aggregator and archive.is for bypassing paywalls.

Copying the cable model would favor big media companies over smaller, more local players.

A music-streaming style option, where the user's monthly payment is distributed in proportion to the articles they read, might be better. (Although not without it's own issues)

If you thought clickbait headlines were annoying when people were competing for ad impressions, just wait until they’re competing for micropayments.

I think this is even harder to make work than straightforward micropayments with crypto or paypal or similar.

Is it the same subscription fee no matter what publications I read or how many articles? (If it varies directly based on what I'm reading then I think it is just micropayments.)

Publications with healthy subscription revenue like WSJ or the Economist are not going to be interested in participating unless they get paid a lot of money and/or can be assured it somehow will not cannibalize their direct sales.

Who owns the customer relationship? Publishers have been burned pretty much 100% of the time they cede that direct relationship to someone else.

Also, it's been tried: see Scroll, Apple News, Flattr, Coil, Brave BAT...

Apple news is around with that model. Not sure how successful they are though.

+1. I come online to discover new things because there's less friction online than anywhere else. What's more, digging through a mountain of content to find something that resonates with you is a form of work in its own right.

Micropayments are friction, and if you put friction on top of the work of discovery, I will do something else with my time.

We also have PBS as a model.

What if you're not a major news outlet?

Also, how's the deal between the distributor and the news outlets? Do you get paid according to views or is it a flat fee?

Centralised billing effectively makes serious journalism impossible. Omnibus subscription services will ruthlessly cut anything that affects the bottom line, and effective journalism is necessarily unpopular.

Right. The problem is all the cooperation required. So then what's needed is an open platform that lets people put in their $10, and then sites can choose to implement it. It's a chicken and the egg problem. It hasn't worked in the past, but times change. Instead of looking at this like 3D televisions or VR, the counter example to think about is tablets — (note: human typed emdash) the Apple Newton was a flop, but the iPad is anything but. Or electric cars. The EV1 by GM was a flop and whatever you think about Elon Musk and Tesla, they do exist now. Video calling is another one. The 90's version just didn't work, but I use Facetime almost every day.

The rails exist for micropayments with cryptocurrency, it's "just" going to take the right person and the right software to implement it for it to happen. The problem is money. LEDs that come in blue are foundational to our modern society. Without blue, we'd only have red and green. Unfortunately for him, the inventor of the blue LED, the man who poured his everything into making it, isn't ridiculously wealthy. For micropayments to happen, some one selfless and not seeking to make a profit on it, need to come along and make it a thing. So I don't know if it'll happen, because ghostty's funding model can't be replicated, but a man can dream.

Oh, but don't you know? If our newspaper is on the same subscription as another newspaper which we don't like, then that means we agree with them in all their radical and dangerous opinions? No, no, no, people want to read only one newspaper, which tells them what to think and how to feel on every subject matter.

That's why streaming services also failed. Imagine Beatles and gangster rap and heavy metal being on the same music platform? Fans would never accept that!

Put out good content that people want to read and people will read it and pay you for it. Youtubers do fine with inconsistent revenue for each video. There is usually less risk writing an article than producing a video.

And with your added layer of review the product would be superior.

I can think of many marketing formulas that would definitely work but since the game is not legwork but propaganda the industry should just die.