4 ms·

I think paywalls for journalism are retrograde. The exact people who can benefit from good journalism (the uninformed) are the exact people who won't subscribe.

I think paywalls for journalism are retrograde. The exact people who can benefit from good journalism (the uninformed) are the exact people who won't subscribe. The people who are already in the demographic for the publication and informed are the ones subscribing. This is the inverse of what you'd think you'd want as a journalist. This is part of the overall news and social media echo-chamber, confirmation-bias inducing content in which the circle of group-think gets tighter and communities begin to think alike. I understand that advertising models are collapsing and journalism is expensive. I know that subscription models and paywalls might seem to make sense since those who consume content benefit from it. But I fear that all this will lead to the uninformed staying uninformed, those in group-think still group-thinking, and those that want to hear what they already want to hear continuing to hear those things as the subscriber model caters to the paying community who will vote with their feet if they don't keep hearing what they want to hear.

simonw 6y ago
I think many people in the news industry agree with you. The problem is that good journalism costs a lot of money, and the advertising business model has collapsed. It needs to be paid for somehow. This is also why non-profit news organizations are growing in influence. https://members.inn.org/directory https://members.inn.org/directory is a good list of those. They tend to be supported by donations or wealthy benefactors, which is itself a risk because it's important for them to stay editorially independent from their donors.
- coffeefirst 6y ago
  It’s also a little ahistorical. Roll back the clock to the 1990’s, and NYT + your local paper + any magazines weren’t exactly cheap. In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today: broadcast news, NPR or the BBC. It’s definitely a problem that the less engaged audience moved from their local news anchor to Facebook, but I can’t make that about paywalls.
  - toyg 6y ago
    > In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today It was easier to circulate some of that paper though. In Europe, cafes will typically buy a bunch of newspapers for their members and leave them free to read on their premises; political parties would do the same or even staple them to bulletin-boards on the street. Same for libraries. I expect the US had some equivalent to that model. The digital divide makes it increasingly harder to circulate content in that manner.

simonw 6y ago

I think many people in the news industry agree with you. The problem is that good journalism costs a lot of money, and the advertising business model has collapsed. It needs to be paid for somehow. This is also why non-profit news organizations are growing in influence. https://members.inn.org/directory https://members.inn.org/directory is a good list of those. They tend to be supported by donations or wealthy benefactors, which is itself a risk because it's important for them to stay editorially independent from their donors.

coffeefirst 6y ago
It’s also a little ahistorical. Roll back the clock to the 1990’s, and NYT + your local paper + any magazines weren’t exactly cheap. In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today: broadcast news, NPR or the BBC. It’s definitely a problem that the less engaged audience moved from their local news anchor to Facebook, but I can’t make that about paywalls.
- toyg 6y ago
  > In those times, the “free” options were the same as they are today It was easier to circulate some of that paper though. In Europe, cafes will typically buy a bunch of newspapers for their members and leave them free to read on their premises; political parties would do the same or even staple them to bulletin-boards on the street. Same for libraries. I expect the US had some equivalent to that model. The digital divide makes it increasingly harder to circulate content in that manner.