Online paywalls freeze people out of current events
Meaningfully keeping up with the news is hard when sources keep information just out of reach
The New York Times is one of many publications that uses paywalls as a way to fund their journalism. (Abby Luciano)
Paywalls are something we have all run into. We want to know about the latest current events, so we search online, find the first link that seems relevant, and get told the story is for subscribers only. Alternatively, a pop-up says this is the third free article you read this month and unlimited browsing comes with a subscription.
Writing opinion pieces gets needlessly hindered when I find an article that might be useful in reinforcing my arguments only for the great paywall of subscription to halt my progress. However, there is more to this discussion than just me getting personally inconvenienced — paywalls affect the quality of reporting that people consume.
In 2019, the number of “hard” online news paywalls was found to be very low with the majority of outlets still offering free content, yet most newspapers had either freemium or “metered” models. The former is where basic access is free but additional content has to be paid for, whereas the latter limits how many articles can be read within a certain timeframe.
Also in 2019, 69 per cent of major United States and European news providers had a paywall of some type, and the figures suggest that the number has only increased since.
Paywalls exist as a result of newspapers needing to recoup the losses incurred by the fall of print news in favour of digital alternatives and the loss of online advertising revenue to ad-blockers. So, with their options dwindling, many outlets began turning to readers to fill the financial gap and that is what brought us here.
Some may ask, “How different is a news subscription from cable packages or streaming services?” The answer is quite, actually. Firstly, cable and streaming are primarily for providing entertainment. It is possible to glean current events from them, cable news channels especially, but using entertainment as a means for acquiring knowledge can only go so far. Eventually it becomes necessary to look for platforms with more in-depth sources.
News outlets are one way to gain new knowledge quickly and easily, and the internet is defined by how convenient it is to use. Ideally this should have led to a happy marriage between news and cyberspace, but that has not exactly panned out.
Another issue regarding online news subscriptions is the fact that so many outlets demand you buy their content. The subscription price for one source may be cheap but when everybody is billing the news it quickly becomes a “death by a thousand cuts” scenario where accessing a variety of news stories and critical details quickly drains one’s finances.
Not everybody can pay multiple monthly or annual dues, with low-income earners being particularly hurt by this impromptu current events gatekeeping.
With many people locked out of news outlets, either because they can’t afford or are unwilling to buy the news of the day, they look for alternatives that can be of questionable quality.
There are many complaints to be made about how mainstream media frames stories, but there are at least internal mechanisms to keep falsehoods out of the headlines and editorializing in the opinion sections.
Alternative news outlets vary from insightful angles that might be overlooked everywhere else to sensationalized disinformation. Considering that almost half of Canadians find it difficult to differentiate between real and fake news, access to verified stories is even more vital.
The media landscape has been altered by the advent of the internet, and outlets did what they thought was best for business. Yet, it is clear that what is best for business is not always so for everyone else.
