How do you solve a problem like a paywall?
The current state of paywalls means everybody loses, writes journalist CT Jones. Readers find it difficult to gain access to articles. News organizations, who are desperate for readers, are pushing those readers away. AI and SEO slop fills the gap — as does propaganda.
Journalists need to get paid or journalism doesn’t happen. Jones writes about his experience with “paywall backlash,” which taught him yet again that “some of the loudest critics [of paywalls] don’t see reporting as labor at all. They see journalists and writers as obstacles, standing in the way of what they already believe. It’s why people were upset that I said writing my article was hard and it’s why they chastised me for assuming people would read past the paywall or even click on the article. Because they didn’t see my article as work.”
A partial solution would be to make it easy for readers to pay a nominal amount for just one article. In the days before the Internet ate journalism, I could walk into a newsstand, browse the racks, find a single issue of a magazine or newspaper with an interesting article, and buy that one issue. There is no equivalent on the Internet — you have to subscribe and ending the subscription is painful.