I would pay ___ monthly for a good online newspaper/magazine

...I was going to make some complaint / argument for $0. But then I remembered I tossed Slashdot a few bucks a while back.
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  To maintain complete accuracy in this poll, I recommend my vote be removed immediately. Thanks.

I haven't seen a magazine worth subscribing to since Byte's hayday. Even though they're free, I couldn't be bothered surfing to most of the magazine sites that are already available.

Some of the magazine articles linked to from Slashdot stories are barely English, others are so biased and pre-decided it's not even funny. Pay for such content? Surely you jest!

I haven't seen GOOD journalism in a major newspaper in a VERY long time. That ship has sailed.

Moreover, The Economist does not waste space on horoscopes, gossip columns, sports, or other trash. However there are numerous pages of advertising for jobs and education gathered near the ends of the magazine (easily skipped over). If you subscribe to the print edition, you get access to the same content online and a few extras.
They also take definite editorial positions which are well-reasoned, and tend to have in-depth and thoughtful coverage of significant stories. Highly recommended reading, even if you don't necessarily agree with their editorial stance.

We all want everything online to be free.

Then, we all install ad-blocker in firefox so we aren't annoyed by the over-obtrusive ads required to keep a decent site free.

Then, we bitch and moan when our favorite site either (a) starts pumping out crap because they had to get rid of all their decent editors or (b) starts charging for content that we used to get for free.

That was pretty much my first reaction. Then, I proceeded to remember when I saw a good newspaper (at the library, it was decades old), and concluded that altough I have a first impression on what a good newspaper is, I don't have enough examples to understand them as a class. Thus, I voted for Cowboy Neal.

I disagree. His livelihood depends on it. He’s extremely biased.

That doesn’t mean that his opinion is invalid, but it certainly means that people should take that bias into consideration when they evaluate statements like the one he made above.

And then he makes statements like this:

Somehow I have a feeling that if he were a musician his tune would be different.

He’s a professional journalist saying that amateur journalism will never cut it. Well, “professional” programmers also talk down on the amateurs who write open-source software. “Professional” musicians talk down on amateur garage bands. I see no real difference amongst them, and I see no reason to believe that any of their claims are true.

That's why I never buy anything with DRM until it is broken. I don't buy games consoles until I can copy the games, I don't buy phones until they can be rooted/jailbroken, I don't buy videos until I can rip them, I don't buy ebooks until I can control them, I don't subscribe to online magazines until I can download a printable PDF, buy products I can't replace the battery on or service myself.

DRM automatically makes any product a piece of shit in my book. Your online newspaper is worthless to me unless it is DRM free, and while I will pay for quality journalism there are plenty of DRM free sources of it. It's better for you anyway because you don't have to spend time and money supporting popular devices like the Kindle or Android/iOS, you can just make a nicely formatted web page or PDF and be fully compatible.

> Further, I believe that someone who self-identifies as a journalist also agrees to abide by a better standard than some guy who writes a blog.

Nope. I don't trust ANY journalist because the professed standard they claim to follow is the problem. Go look at any J school these days and they are all about preparing their students to go forth and make the world a better place. Which is crap. If you want to change the world go into politics, social service, religion, etc.

I want to see journalism die and a return to reporting. No asshole, you aren't supposed to 'make a difference' you are only supposed to be the boot on the ground reporting back the who, what, why, when, where and how. Just the facts, to your best ability to dig em out and distill them down into useful articles. No you aren't just supposed to take a press release and run with it, PR Newswire could replace yer sorry ass if that is all the job required. So yes a reporter should be cultivating sources, sometimes even anonymous ones. Good reporters dig for stories, root out the things the powers that be want hidden. But before it hits print it has to be documented well, leave rumor, gossip and innuendo to the sleeze rags. No 'value added' analysis, no merging opinion with reporting, no suppression of facts that don't fit the agenda. Not saying a news source can not ALSO have opinion and analysis but straight news should be kept clearly apart from those things.

Compare coverage now to the past. In the past a newspaper would often print an entire speech. Now it is rare for a whole sentence to make it into a TV story and perhaps a paragraph or so in a print story. Even in online 'journalism' where space isn't a limitation it is rare to see a link to full text. The whole focus now is the writer telling you what the speaker intended and what you should think about it.