Access to quality investigative journalism is more important than ever. With the decline of printed newspapers, the lowering of the barriers to publish online, the increasing sensationalism of TV news, and -yes- the rise of online paywalls, we've forced a certain economic segment of the voting populace to make decisions with a limited set of poorer-quality information.
"But without paywalls, how will quality journalism continue?"
I usually like to point people to take a look at the quality of the output of the BBC and NPR, and ask ourselves why America doesn't really have a decent printed-news equivalent. We also need to take a good look at how other industries have coped with the digitization of media. The music industry, the movie industry, the makers of books - for a long time they stumbled (and certainly still aren't perfect), but they're finally beginning to come up with profitable solutions that satisfy creators and consumers alike. I personally think there's a void for a quality news subscription platform (e.g. a news version of Spotify/Netflix/Kindle Books) that would allow journalists to get compensated by people who subscribe to an all-you-can-eat model from various publications.
