WORLDVIEW: Winning the war against fake news, one subscription at a time

Quentin Wray's contribution today is a bit of preaching to the converted. You do, after all, make a direct financial contribution to our efforts through your Biznews Premium subscription. But his insightful piece unpacks why new business models are vital in keeping a free media alive – and winning the war against fake news.

Quentin writes: "Back in the earlyish nineties, when the internet was first becoming something more than just the means to distribute hard-core pornography and unlicensed pharmaceuticals, newspaper publishers made a catastrophic error of judgement. Their folly not only pushed their own industry close to the brink but also created the space for a new scourge called fake news.

There were some exceptions – Alec's Moneyweb being a case in point – but generally publishers saw the internet as a technology rather than as a publishing platform and didn't adapt business models accordingly. By going online without any real thought about a proper business plan, publishers broke a model that had worked for hundreds of years. And they had nothing to replace it with.

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