From Yahoo:
For those looking for free news online, the search is becoming harder.
Tougher restrictions on online content have boosted digital paid subscriptions at many news organizations, amid a growing trend keeping content behind a “paywall.”
Free news has by no means disappeared, but recent moves by media groups and Facebook and Google supporting paid subscriptions is forcing free-riders to scramble.
For some analysts, the trend reflects a normalization of a situation that has existed since the early internet days that enabled consumers to get accustomed to the notion of free online content.
“I think there is a definite trend for people to start paying for at least one news source,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst who follows digital media for Kaleido Insights.
. . . .
A study last year by the Media Insight Project found 53 percent of Americans have paid for at least one news subscription. A separate report by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute found two-thirds of European newspapers used a pay model.
. . . .
News organizations are unable to compete against giants like Google and Facebook for digital advertising, and are turning increasingly to readers.
“For large-scale news organizations whether they are national or regional, that want to have a large reporting staff, reader revenue needs to be the number one source,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst and consultant who writes the Newsonomics blog.
Doctor said some news organizations are getting close to 50 percent of revenues from subscriptions and sees that rising to as much as 70 percent.
The New York Times reported the number of paid subscribers grew to 2.6 million and that subscriptions accounted for 60 percent of 2017 revenues. The Washington Post last year touted it had more than one million paid digital readers.
. . . .
While well-known national publications may be able to navigate digital pay models, it will be harder for smaller, regional and local news organizations on slimmer budgets, said Radcliffe.
“Smaller local organizations might find it harder to make their case to readers (to pay), and they have a smaller pool of customers,” Radcliffe said.
. . . .
The paywall trend may have some other consequences by limiting national “conversations” based on shared news.
“Content that is behind a paywall does not go viral,” Lieb said, but noted that important news scoops can still spark national discussion.
Link to the rest at Yahoo
Given the bias of the mainstream media, I think this is a good thing. They have failed this country on so many levels.
As for Facebook, I don’t see them blocking anything because there’s more crap in my newsfeed than there’s ever been. It gets tiring and I rarely go there any more, so all their monetizing is eventually going to bite them in the butt.
Before the advent of the web, competently researched and reported news was never free. You paid for the newspaper by the issue or subscribed. Ditto Time, Newsweek, and other timely periodicals. The broadcast networks’ nightly news programs carried ads, which you paid for when you purchased their products.
As someone else said, today’s so-called ‘news’ is nothing but clickbait, shock-news to make you click on it and see their ads – since that’s how most of them get paid.
Is there a fix? No idea, but the news behind the paywalls looks just as ‘shocked up’ as those out in the open …
Paywalled news is useful if you want to know that Trump puts ketchup on steak. And that he has no pet.
Other than that it its no different than non-paywalled news aggregated by MSN or at USATODAY. So far I see no need to pay for their news services and I have a choice between far left bias and far right bias.
Back in October I stopped going to news sites altogether. I decided that it wasn’t adding anything of value to my life. All it generally provided was “talking points” for non-conversations with people.
Some long-form pieces still bubble up and I encounter them through other means, but all the clickbait headlines and useless “news” is out of the way.
I have more time to do other things and I don’t miss it.
So – go ahead and paywall away!
Very true. Now every time I see the paywall (or even “turn off your ad blocker”), I check the headline and shrug and move on.
Considering the quality of most of it, it’s hard to feel like you’re missing much.
Same. I’ve found some new sites that have had worthwhile content, but they’re not any of the old ones that are asking about the adblocker.
I’m a bit cynical about one of the Old Guard sites moaning about the adblocker, when they long ago decided not to pay reporters for their content, figuring “exposure” was sufficient. If I thought they were paying the writers I could be moved, but since they’re not, nah.
You get what you pay for. We’ve gone back to paid subscriptions to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Economist (which I find dreary, but read occasionally).
At least they try. The scarier part is what ‘my fellow Americans’ are reading.
Americans are reading things that conflict with the Washington Post and the New York Times? Are they even disagreeing with them?
Actually, less viral national “conversations” can plausibly be described as a good thing.