Democracy dies behind paywalls by Cosmin Ene encourages people to read outside their own news bubble. Which is a good thing. In his case, he couldn’t find certain stories in The New York Times (“all the news that fits our agenda”), so he looked to other sites and hit their paywalls.
First, good on you, Cosmin, for branching out. You might enjoy Ground, which tries to point out the blind spots for left- and right-leaning news media.
Cosmin goes on to say that paywalls are dangerous. The argument seems to be that democracy requires citizens to have access to various points of view and that paywalls prevent that access — because people don’t like them, or don’t want to subscribe.
Further, he argues, by putting (allegedly) responsible journalism behind paywalls, publishers are driving consumers towards (allegedly) more dangerous, extreme political views, which (he claims) tend to be free.
I’m not buying that. Yes, there are responsible and irresponsible news sources out there, but I don’t think you can divide them this way — i.e., the responsible stuff is behind paywalls and the irresponsible stuff is free.
There are also many legitimate ways to get free access to the content that’s behind a paywall. You can watch the news, or listen to a podcast. They often summarize interesting stuff that’s behind the paywall.
Also, it’s not as if democracy is going to die because an individual consumer doesn’t want to pay for a subscription to get access to a particular article on a particular site. The topic is probably covered elsewhere.
Despite my misgivings about how he gets there, I do agree with his conclusion, which is that publishers should also have a pay-per-view option. That’s a topic I’ll cover in the next Krehbiel Letter.
(Here’s the article — Thoughts on paywalls.)
Interesting. Well-said.