Journalism exists in a political economy of commercial and philanthropic capital that skews its practice along class lines, and produces institutional corruption (per @Lessig) that disrupts trust and opens the door for mass-media demagoguery and political extremism.
Commercial news cannot compete in the attention economy unless it jumps the shark via lolcats, "if it bleeds it leads," and pandering to ideological politics; nonprofit news cannot survive unless it caters to donors, who skew affluent, thus perpetuating existing class bias.
One solution may be co-op organizing that aggregates community economic power and trust around journalism practice as public service outside the market. A new co-op model in #Oakland that confronts power imbalances in real estate offers an example of this: shareable.net/real-estate-co…
Journalism's political economy is an unexamined and pernicious problem. But community organizing around publicly financed news co-ops is an intriguing strategy for offsetting the inherent power imbalances of commercial and philanthropic news financing.

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23 Nov
@GibranAshraf @jgksf Thanks for asking. Multi-part answer here. :) First, consider that journalism practice exists in one of two economic spheres, commercial or philanthropic, each with distinct but connected legal/regulatory structures that are rooted in the political nature of capital.
@GibranAshraf @jgksf In the commercial sphere. news is a product and it must thrive as such in the marketplace, which today is the attention economy. As a news producer you must create demand within that marketplace in order to convert customers for the product.
@GibranAshraf @jgksf In the philanthropic sphere, news is ostensibly a public service, but it has to satisfy the demands of the private entities and individuals who dispense philanthropic capital — who have wide latitude to act within IRS 501(c)3 regulatory structures.
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