The official announcement says they did because people have been asking for a way to support the site, but it’s not at all clear those people had a paywall in mind. Ars Technica has had subscriptions for years, and they paywall extra site functionality like topic filtering and a full-text RSS feed, not content.
This is the way.
Same with mobile apps. And give me a way to support a dev without using Google Play (I realize iOS is more problematic).
I’m not sure how sustainable this model is. Especially when a reader browses via a link aggregator and therefore reads news articles on many different websites. I doubt most people want/can afford a subscription on dozens of different news outlets, as that’ll quickly add up to a triple-digit monthly bill.
Something like Flattr, but maybe non-optional, would be better. Pay a fixed monthly fee and split the payment between all sites you read articles on (maybe based on how many, or reading time or whatever).
$1-$2 month maybe: they want $7 which is close enough to a Hulu/Netflix subscription fee that you immediately realize it’s not tenable to subscribe to all the major news sites you read, so then you start needing to build a “top 5” in your head because that’s all you can reasonably budget and that’s either too much of a PITA for whatever article you’re trying to read or you realize Verge isn’t in that top 5 and move on
Even $1 is probably too much. I read articles from dozens of different sources and managing that would royally suck. Got a new credit card? Have a fun next hour of your life logging in everywhere…
No, just give me an add-on so I can pay to bypass a paywall. I don’t want an account everywhere, I just want to read your article, and I’m willing to pay a few cents to do so (way more than they’d get with ads).
And that’s $7/month for fewer, better ads.
The Verge loved shitting on streaming services pushing paid subscriptions that still have ads. I wonder how critical they’ll be of that now…
Supposedly The Verge is behind a dynamic paywall, metered based on high use, but I got a block in the first article I clicked on this week. I don’t mind a paywall but be clear on what is behind a paywall and what isn’t. I will stop visiting the site at all if I can’t figure it out.
I wish these sites had an option to pay 50cents or whatever for articles I want to read so i can still support them without having to commit to another fucking subscription.
If it is behind a paywall, it isnt news, it is an asset.
So physical newspapers aren’t news?
News papers are a physical item, not bits hidden behind a boolean set to true. Plus, I can go read a newspaper at the store if I want to.
You pay for information and not paper or pixels.
Information should be free. Putting it behind a paywall makes it so the less fortunate suffer by being kept out of the loop.
Information is free, it’s the transmission medium (paper printing or webservers) and the journalist’s wages that you should pay for.
That doesn’t really address their point, that’s simply a motte and bailey. Limiting access to information (knowledge/education) on a basis of payment is a hindrance of lower classes not upper classes. We especially see this with academic publishing and the people writing those papers aren’t even paid for it usually.
You shouldn’t have to pay for the journalist or the transmission, similarly to education it is best for a society (especially a democracy) if information is freely accessible regardless of one’s finances.
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Wow this is a great article, thanks for sharing. This quote in particular has a lot to unpack:
We are not chasing platform traffic, we’re not chasing social video views, we’re not doing sponsored content to make our business go like everyone else is forced to do. If you want to go play in those games, you have no choice but to do sponsor integrations. That’s just how those businesses work. We won’t do it, we sell our ethics policy.
The Verge’s decision to raise a paywall comes at a moment when many news media companies are grappling with the dilemma of an emerging gulf between the information ecosystems of free and paid news. As more media companies lean into subscriptions to drive revenue, the reach and impact of their news stories is often limited, or targeted more toward an affluent, educated audience willing to pay for news.>
That must be really challenging if you run an ethical journalism organization. Gone are the days of paying for newspapers, people now expect it for free, and that’s not sustainable for a regular business. So it creates a moral dilemma for ethical journalists, who naturally want to continue to reach a large audience and worry about alienating people who can’t afford subscriptions.
The free news sites don’t have that same quandary. They make money by selling your data, so they remain free. Since it’s what the people want, they don’t think about the fact that this is achieved by unethical means. These people are already predisposed to be less educated due to income levels alone, meaning they’re less likely to perform the critical thinking necessary to realize that journalism - ethics = fake news. Talk about a vicious cycle.
I know I’m not saying anything that people who’ve been paying attention the past 8 years don’t already know, but when you really think about all the implications it’s kind of astounding. >
Hot take: Journalism is a public service and as such should be paid from our taxes, with checks and balances in place to prevent takeover by persons in power.
I mean, that’s why BBC, NPR, NHK, etc. exist. And the result is that in a lot of ways it is more reliable than for profit news, but at the same time they’ll never really bite the hand that feeds (aka government, more specifically the Dems in NPR’s case.)
