Why are some high profile news organizations hiding behind a firewall?

[genxlib]

4. This is not a reasonable complaint

They are not hiding behind firewalls. They are trying to generate cash flow to run their operation.

Doing real news reporting and running a media organization cost money.

Even if they were a non-profit, they would still need funds to operate.

The biggest problem in the news/internet industry right now is that there is very little actual news being generated. I mean old fashion investigative reporting where new facts are brought to light. That costs money.

Most of what you see on the internet that is nominally classified as news is actually commentary. Some of it is just straight up opinion or conjecture. But most of it referential commentary where they link to real news, cull the highlights and comment about it. Often this is done as spin to represent the source article to a particular audience to the right or left.

I will call this Vampire News. It is adding almost nothing in value to the original story but sucks up page views and advertising revenue. Meanwhile, the source of the original news has the highest investment and is left starving for revenue.

The trend over the last 30 years is to have less and less source news and more vampire news. This is an incredibly dangerous trend. Without the source news, we have nothing but opinions.

WaPo is one of the few organizations still doing old fashioned journalism. I support their right to get paid for what they produce. If we don't support them, we will get what we pay for.