7 ms·

Why link paywalled article?

• drivers99 7y ago
  Why don’t you just buy a subscription?
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • Sembiance 7y ago
    All coronavirus articles should be FREE and accessible without registration. Any company doing otherwise is socially irresponsible.
    • ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
      Firstly, this isn't about SARS-COV-2. It is about the more broad concept of viral classification. Secondly, journal articles, yes, I agree. And a lot of government funding should be pouring into research to be published and that needs to be available to help us fight this. Journalism articles though are more tricky. Because they need to pay their employees, the journalists, and cover their costs. Given that 90% is all news now (my guess) is about covid-19, then there would be significantly less revenue for journalism if it said it couldn't paywall articles covid-19 articles. Additionally, advertising revenue is likely to collapse as a second order effect of the recession this crisis is bringing. Finally, there is a lot of competition for news, so any major news story has multiple free articles about it that will be accessible to all (with ads of course). The highest quality journalism is currently coming from two places: paywalled websites and NPR. NPR is free and fulfills a comparable market position as BBC. That is your "public option". But not allowing paywalls would kill the quality reporting of the nytimes and Washington Post and turn them into CNN / Fox / MSNBC.