Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trust-democracy/678032/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/nZ2MF

How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no.

Now you’re faced with that old dilemma: to pay or not to pay. (Yes, you may face this very dilemma reading this story in The Atlantic.) And it’s not even that simple. It’s a monthly or yearly subscription—“Cancel at any time.” Is this article or story or fact important enough for you to pay?
Or do you tell yourself—as the overwhelming number of people do—that you’ll just keep searching and see if you can find it somewhere else for free?

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America’s leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option.

Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.

*snip*

[AZSkiffyGeek]

1. And the article is paywalled!

[dalton99a]

2. +1

[Nevilledog]

3. Proving his point.

That's why I include a no paywall link in my posts. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[RainCaster]

4. According to this publisher, democracy isn't very important

But profit is.

[Voltaire2]

5. A large part of the problem is google and facebook, which take around half of the ad revenue

generated from links through their platforms to news publisher websites. A few huge publishers (NYT for example) have managed to get enough subscribers and direct links to their websites to survive, but even they are dependent on social media to get their content to people, and they are losing half of the resultant ad revenue.

The gouging by facebook and google needs to stop. But that is just one of the problems. Consolidation and financialization of the news (and actually all) media has made everything shittier.

Here is Cory Doctorow on the shitty state of the news:

Long before the internet, news-media companies were gripped by consolidation. Corporate raiders bought and looted newspapers, consolidating their ad-sales into national call centers (wiping out knowledge of and relationships between the salesforce and local businesses); consolidating reporting (laying off national and state politics reporters, as well as reporters covering issues of general interest —reviewers, science and business reporters, etc); selling off physical plant and reducing local reporting (or eliminating it altogether).

The news media — which had successfully weathered the advent of the telegraph, radio, TV, cable, and satellite — went into the dotcom era with its cash reserves gone, burdened by debt, and vulnerable to price-shocks from the buildings and plant they had sold off and leased back.

Things have only gone from bad to worse. Private equity rollups reduced major metros’ daily papers into skeleton crews operating out of brick bunkers the size of a Chipotle.

The owners of these papers are typically far-right ideologues, offshore vulture capitalists who debt-load their acquisitions, demand government bailouts, and then publish manifestos glorifying “market capitalism” — or turn great papers into side-hustles used to pimp their owners’ online casinos.

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content-a97306884a6b

[Flatrat]

6. You know whats almost never behind paywalls?

Last edited Mon Apr 15, 2024, 06:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Right wing media.

Always free.

That's one big reason our nation's minds are so polluted with bullshit.