Imagine searching the internet for updates on a global event, information on a candidate in an election, or some historical account you need for a school paper. You stumble across the perfect headline under your Google search results—from a reliable source like the New York Times or the Washington Post—you go for the click, and suddenly, your access is denied by a paywall. We’ve all been there: being blocked from reading the perfect piece just because you reached your monthly free article limit on that publication. That is, unless, you subscribe.
Today, the majority of our acclaimed online news outlets utilize paywalls, from the Times to the Post to the Wall Street Journal to the UK’s Financial Times. For context, ever since the rise of the internet and the online media news revolution, individuals with smartphones and computers were given the power to access news for free, and with that came the downfall of the print newspaper. According to the Pew Research Center, the popularity of paper news has been consistently in decline since the 2010s, with 2010 seeing the largest annual drop in readership at 8 to 11 percent. Thus, adjusting to the developing online market for news, newspapers began implementing paywalls to compensate for years of lost print revenue, all the while combating the need to resort to in-article advertising.
The big question is, do these paywalls obstruct us from knowledge of what’s going on in the world? Perhaps not for some, but the truth is that the development of paywalls arrived with many social consequences. On one hand, paywalls are a necessity to keep media outlets afloat and support quality journalism; without this revenue, we won’t have any news at all. But ultimately, the current state of the online news industry and its paywalls exacerbates our already polarized political climate, social inequality, and the spread of misinformation, thus undermining the definition of and mission behind journalism.
Online news outlets have two main options for generating returns: subscription charges and paywalls, or the alternative of ad revenue. The latter option comes with its own multitude of problems. Advertisements make articles look cluttered and flashy, thus sacrificing both the visual appearance of the site and more importantly, its perceived reliability and trustworthiness. In addition, the availability of online ad-blockers serve as a viable loophole for users fed up by ads, not to mention the fact that even if the ads were viewed, a majority of the revenue would go directly to internet ad giants like Google and Facebook.
Indeed, the remaining solution for outlets is thus to generate their necessary revenue by charging for subscriptions. This way, the outlets opt for appearing reliable and collecting their subscription profits in full. As of 2019, 76 percent of US-based online newspapers have implemented paywalls, and worldwide, across seven different countries, the average monthly subscription price has landed at 15.75 USD per month. And although many are willing to pay the price—53 percent of American adults pay for a news subscription—asking for almost 200 dollars a year, on average, for the basic truth, is excessive for most Americans.
Particularly in the States, these prices and barriers contribute to our already polarized political climate. Think about it: if you’re liberal, you’re not going to want to pay a conservative newspaper a couple of hundred dollars a year just to diversify your perspectives. You’re just going to opt for a standard New York Times subscription like everyone else. The existence of paywalls limits the exposure of news consumers to various political viewpoints, hence exacerbating the distinctions amongst political bubbles we live in. The requirement for retaining one’s own personal subscription also discourages the sharing of content across parties and communities, and this friction against the spread of information continues to reinforce our bubbles.
Furthermore, the significant price point of news subscriptions in our digital age contributes to the spread of misinformation. If news is too expensive, at least Facebook and Twitter are free; these are the platforms where fake news spreads rampantly online. As editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine Nathan J. Robinson puts it, “the truth is paywalled but the lies are free.” The repercussions of subscription-based news thus inherently contradict the core meaning and purpose behind journalism: the idea that access to the truth is a human right. Indeed, the price placed on truth catastrophically magnifies inequality when only the wealthy can afford access to reliable, high-quality journalism. Researchers at Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism conclude that at least within the States, those who pay for news are wealthier and better educated than those who do not.
The solutions to our news paywall dilemma encompass the complexities of the economic network containing outlets, readers, third-party news distributors, and the government. As subscription-based news becomes increasingly prominent, the biggest news outlets begin to parallel the issue we’re seeing amongst the oligopoly in video streaming, and particularly the competition amongst platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max; the more existing segments and companies, the more difficult it becomes for the user to finance a diverse viewing experience, the more pressure there is for the industry to reform. Any successful plans to tackle the flaws of paywalls lie in their ability to transform the news industry in such a way that keeps outlets in business while also diversifying the type of content consumers can read in an accessible manner.
There already exist, for example, a variety of popular news aggregators and third party initiatives that allow users to view various news sources and paywalled content for a separate fee, such as Apple News, Google News, or Yahoo News. Indeed, this idea has allowed providers like Apple News to gain upwards of 100 million users. And yet, these initiatives still don’t solve the fundamental problem that, in an age of instantly available free online media, most people are not willing to pay even for bundled news. The truth is that this alternative still costs money, and in the same way a majority of Americans aren’t willing to dish out 16 dollars a month for one source’s news subscription, they probably won’t be much more likely to pay a similar amount for a more diverse perspective; the appeal of news aggregators just isn’t as high as it feels like it should be.
Between the long-run infeasibility of news aggregators and online newspapers—whether paywalled, ad-powered, or neither—there appears to be no clear-cut route for redesigning the news industry’s business model. Of course, more alternatives remain, but all with their own imperfections: local initiatives and government funding to support journalism, publicly available news outlets, releasing crucial facts for free and upcharging on the rest, or a new system based on digital micropayments for each article read. In any scenario, the current paywall system cannot stay in place forever. The future of online news media lies in our ability to balance available resources for outlets, public accessibility to information, and quality journalism in the search for the truth.