It very well could be that he opposes The Atlantic’s practices and is using this op-ed to speak out against it.
I agree with the sentiment, but I’m not sure how to make it work. Journalists need to make a living, but if it’s distributed free, where’s that money going to come from?
damn if only we could subsidize journalism instead of oil and meat
oh well i guess
We could but that brings its own moral issues. Can you trust a journalist to be truthful and critical of a government that signs their paycheque?
The thing for me is that there are too many (essentially all) news portals, who are doing this individually which brings the reader into the conflict of “what should I pay for?”. Hands down, I’m not consuming one news paper and that’s it. In Germany here, I’ve got about 5 which immediately come to my mind and then some more internationally. Every portal wants 3-5 euro/dollar/whatever from me per month, which is not manageable.
What we need - in my opinion - is the possibility for a specific subscription bundle. I’d be happy to pay for my news for a manageable amount and payment. Let it be 15 euro per month for x free to chose papers and I won’t even think twice, because yes! These guys need to be paid too and I’d love to give them their deserved payment.
But this situation we’ve got here? All over the world? No wonder, online archives are thriving.
People used to pay for physical newspapers, and TV journalists were paid for by ads. Ads were unskippable, and companies would pay more for them because of it.
Yet you pay the paywall fee and there are still ads, and you talk about the lack of funds to pay journalists while the Murdochs and other media families live it up, richer than kings.
I’m pretty sure the article mentions that is behind a paywall. The article writer is against it.
I feel like the people most affected by paywalls, i.e. people who read their news, are already pretty well informed.
There’s plenty of access to quality journalism, more than ever, the problem is that no amount of quality or availability can compete with misinformation tailored to addict, comfort, and flatter it’s audience. You can’t inform people against their will.
The thing that bothers me most with the current pay wall situation is that I’m not against paying for journalism in general, in fact I favor it: Reward good work with good money.
The problem is the inflexible payment methods. I want to be able to pay some cents for a single article quickly and conveniently. But most online newspapers offer only a month+ long subscription. That’s asking way too much, I want really want just this single article. And all the other stuff that you’re also giving me access to I simply wouldn’t use.
I like to read up on specific topics from a variety of sources but the current economic models heavily punish my archetype of costumer. I simply can’t afford to open up hundreds of subscriptions over the course of a year.
Now often I simply fall into the X free articles per month category because I stray across so many different media outlets but that feels bad too because I actually want to pay for individual articles and help preserve journalism but there’s no means. Best I can do currently is rotate some subscriptions each month and free ride on the rest.
In the paper era you could at least grab an individual issue (not an individual article, series or section thougn) at a newsstand and weren’t locked in.
The web desperately needs infrastructure to effortlessly and quickly transfer small amounts of currency - change my mind. European Central Bank is working on a digital Euro which could lead to this but that’s many years down the road and also going to depend a lot on their implementation.
