Interesting exchange in the Q&A Student: How does The Economist model fit into your thesis, I guess? Because they’re actually growing, aren’t they? Shirky: Th

Interesting exchange in the Q&A Student: How does The Economist model fit into your thesis, I guess? Because they’re actually growing, aren’t they? Shirky: They are growing. So the one big asterisk to the value-of-sharing model is financial news, because financial news is not valuable the larger the audience is. It’s, in fact, valuable the smaller the audience is. I don’t want my mom reading what I know about IBM until I get my trades in. And so, a paywall damages general news and benefits financial news. And it is no accident that the three great models of pay walls are The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist. Because although they have general interest sections, they are all, at base, niche publications for traders and business people.