tl;dr journalists can't pay the bills with exposure. Because this forum values well-thought-out articles. These articles generally require a lot of time to com

tl;dr journalists can't pay the bills with exposure. Because this forum values well-thought-out articles. These articles generally require a lot of time to compose. If the authors' don't have some other job, then they have to be paid for their time. In order for the company to acquire the money to pay, they need to collect money from: 1) advertisements, which for general-audience text media, aren't that valuable. 2) subscriptions, which few people will pay for if they can get the content for free.