News paywalls are deeply problematic because when you "surf" the Web and when you stumble upon some paywalled article, you are either stuck (blocked from viewin

News paywalls are deeply problematic because when you "surf" the Web and when you stumble upon some paywalled article, you are either stuck (blocked from viewing the content) and you leave or you view the paywalled article in "pirated" version via our "beloved" archive.is. This dynamic is not good for a news industry as a whole. I never subscribed to a newspaper and I don't know what exactly drives an average Joe to subscribe to one but my assumption is that one or two paywalled articles won't drive someone to subscribe to the newspaper, it would rather frustrate them to get stuck and blocked from reading. Either you will subscribe because of the word of mouth and perceived reputation of the newspaper or you will subscribe because your favorite author is writing for the newspaper you want to subscribe. That's why I find it mind boggling that for example The Economist's news articles are anonymous and not signed by authors. My suggested solutions are: 1. Make old news articles free and really new ones paywalled or 2. Introduce micropayments for each article (for example 10 cents to unlock an article for lifetime) or 3. Aggregate all paywalled articles across different newspapers to some news aggregator and then ask people to subscribe. Tbh, I'm a huge fan of independent journalism and internet blogging which are free and either ad-supported or donation supported.