by cmsellers » Fri Oct 20, 2017 3:03 pm
When a formerly independent blog gets subsumed behind a media organization's paywall. It's only happened to me twice, and in both cases it was easy enough to get around on non-mobile devices, but it annoys the fuck out of me.
First time it happened was FiveThirtyEight, which I've been reading almost since its launch and which joined the New York Times just after the paywall went up. So I would use my ten free articles on FiveThirtyEight articles, then clear my cookies and do it again, until Nate moved to ESPN and turned it into a full-fledged site.
Second time it happened was with Tetrapod Zoology, which I read irregularly since it was part of Science Blogs and which is currently part of Scientific American. Scientific American has had a paywall around magazine content since at least 2014, but this week I noticed that I can no longer read Tet Zoo on my mobile device, suggesting they've extended it to the rest of their site.
Now, I get the logic that the editors of these organizations use here. "We try to have a varied range of wonderful content on our website, and the paywall ensures that the authors of the blog you like reading get paid."
But from my perspective: "Aside from this blog, nothing on your site is so appealing I can't get it for free elsewhere. I'm not going to be strong-armed into buying a subscription to read one blog. If you didn't make your paywall so easy to circumvent, I'd just stop reading it entirely."
Now, if I had an income and mainstream media sites offered a tip jar, I'd be/have been happy to tip the author the amount that these sites charge for a subscription (or more, digital media subscriptions are often under five bucks) and the site could take a cut. But for some reason, mainstream media sites are reluctant to do that. Even Cracked has refused to do that despite many, many people suggesting it as a way for people to reward good writing and punish clickbait.