Journalism has reached a precarious state: Responsible journalism is arguably a prerequisite forhealthy democracy, yet responsible news outlets are largely pay-walled. The vote of a well-informed citizen nevertheless counts as much as that of a citizen informed by internet trash.
Journalism has taken a brutal beating by capitalism, and this observation is hardly subject to controversy. Corporate mergers and the quest for greater profitability have reduced investigative staff. Ground-breaking stories are more likely to come from leaks than from months of investigative journalism. A productive journalist writes many articles, not necessarily illuminating ones.
To make matters worse, there are often consequences to pay for a newspaper that writes unfavorable articles about an advertiser, or potential advertiser. This might be seen as comeuppance when applied to companies like twitter, until the realisation arrives that this must be happening quietly all the time to all news outlets.
These three problems tell us that capitalism is a problem for journalism, not a solution.
Funding Alternatives
This is not the only way to fund journalism. Science is also in the business of producing information for the public good. This is seen to be the domain of universities, not corporations. Science is largely government-funded, but not government-influenced: grants are awarded by panels of scientists, not political appointees, and not by investors. The grants are administrated by the universities themselves, not bureaucrats, and not investment management companies.
When a scientist makes a claim, other scientists question it. They can force a retraction and they can professionally quarantine reckless scientists. Science is not beyond criticism itself, but it is at least not partisan, and it is incapable of propagating “false science.”
Science has an unofficial system of evaluation involving citations. A scientist can be considered for promotion based in part on the number of articles that cite hers. In other words, being prolific is not enough. Universities want to know how a scientist’s work is regarded in the scientific community. A prolific scientist is not necessarily a good one. If a scientist’s articles are cited by many others, it is a sign that the scientist is influential.
Government Funded Journalism
If a newspaper were profitable to the extent that it was cited, the playing field would be completely up-ended. Instead of competing for clicks, which encourages recklessness and sensationalism, a newspaper would be rewarded for writing ground-breaking articles that other newspapers reference. During the Watergate scandal, all newspapers quoted the Washington Post because that is the newspaper that did the investigation and which broke the story.
More citations would translate into bigger government grants.
The precedent for taxpayer-supported media already exists, for example, PBS in the US and ARD in Germany. Seductively, the same system would reward independent bloggers for deep investigations. For a single person, revealing a story on the scale of the Iran-Contra affair would be equivalent to winning the lottery.
Defeating Sensationalism
Citation journalism does not extinguish far-right propaganda. In fact, at least some would be subsidised in this scheme by government grants. However, political homogeneity is not the goal and oughtn’t be. Sensationalism is the problem to be defeated. Sensationalism of all kinds would be discouraged for the same reason: sensationalist claims needn’t cite. These articles are based on false claims or are pure speculation. While false claims might increase sales, they do not increase citations. With citation journalism, a newspaper which makes false claims would run the risk of professional marginalisation.
Nevertheless, a circle of neo-nazi periodicals would not necessarily be able boost their own standing by citing each other if a citation-ranking system is used. A newspaper which is highly cited would lend that weight to the citations it makes. This is similar to Google’s ranking system: A website which is the object of links from a popular website has higher standing than a website which has links from an unknown website.
More Chances for All
A weighted citation system gives small newspapers the incentive to publish ground-breaking stories. When the Marion County Record was raided by local police in 2023, it documented its resistance and propelled itself to national attention. After the Ouray County Plaindealer published an article in 2024 about the local police chief, all print versions of the newspaper were mysteriously stolen. The newspaper removed its internet paywall and aggressively reported on its own case, vowing another print run. These atypical displays of courage would be much more common using a citation-based system.
Foreseeable Criticism
Citation-based journalism is subject to the same criticism as science, namely, of creating a mono-culture, or echo-chamber. However, click-based journalism is no better. In other words, citation-based journalism shares one disadvantage but avoids two.