Paywall journalism is not a real journalism
If your news site is behind a paywall, it is not journalism, it is just a blog.
Who is a journalist anyway?
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you imagine someone being a journalist?
What is the nature of the profession – or rather, what is its core meaning?
When I picture a journalist, I see someone truth-seeking, standing guard for society.
Exposing everyone’s lies, digging up the dirt nobody else looks at, focusing attention where society’s oversight is narrow and processing all of it. Translating events into understanding, debushifying the noise, making truth accessible.
So everyone can make decisions from the same information. Building a fairer society, where nobody’s left in the dark.
Journalism exists as a public good – a necessary function for society and democracy.
A necessary one for society and democracy. A public good that ensures information doesn’t belong to the few: the many facets, the conflicting views, the opinions weighed in and explored.
A necessary force when everyone wants to hide their shady stuff under a rug.
Sure, there are for-profit journalists too – working a specific beat, filing stories as part of a process, opinions baked in. But the canonical journalist? The one that matters?
Truth-seeking. Bullshit-destroyer.
Behind a paywall, it is not journalism – it is a paid article.
The output of a journalist – their work, what they do – cannot stay hidden. Otherwise it is the opposite of the very idea of what they do.
After all, journalism exists to serve the reader’s right to know, and ultimately the goal is that as many people as possible read the work and take it into consideration. Now, or later, or 10 years from now, or 100 years from now.
So if you see a company doing that – hiding content behind paywalls, blocking bots, blocking people, giving unequal access to you or your bots – and at the same time calling itself a journalistic news site?
Don’t trust them. At that point they’re not news. They’re a blog site. Profit-first, journalism-second, if at all…
Not far from a regular personal page on Instagram with an OnlyFans link.
If they put that information behind a paywall, they’re not making it available to everyone at once.
Which means they’re implying only the people who can pay can make the right decisions – only the rich get access to the truth.
At that point you’re not a servant of society anymore – you’re a for-profit company.
Know the difference
Selling knowledge is fine. If you provide valuable business intelligence – helping someone make better decisions, get an edge – that’s clear. That’s a product.
The problem is when most of what you do is current events reporting, but they pretend it is something else.
It pretends to be a ‘public benefit’. With terms and conditions.
Call yourself what you are: not a news site, but a seller of business intelligence!
If they are selling information while calling themselves journalists? Be very suspicious.
So is selling info okay? Generally yes, as long as it’s clear.
Advertise it upfront: "This is not news. This is not for everyone. This is for people willing to pay to get ahead. To know more. To decide better."
That’s honest. That’s a transaction. Could it be still called journalism? Maybe, but that heavily implies a very serious focus on some field. Like, you might want to buy information from a professional investigative journalist to better understand some business area. Have you ever seen a consulting agency that provides valuable information for free? Now you get the vibe!
They are even acting against themselves
Source: 23 Major News Sites Have Blocked the Wayback Machine, Digital History In Danger – major news outlets block the Wayback Machine, preventing public access to archived content. Twenty-three sites including the New York Times cite AI training fears as justification.
Well, first of all, of course, there’s the public good of having their track record verifiable – and public accountability for what the media were telling people in the past.
Even from a business perspective – if they only cared about being paid – they should keep a chain of past history you can look up and verify, whether the journalism was good or bad in the past.
Like whether there are massive lies or omissions – which, in hindsight, you can now judge as right or wrong, accurate or not – how good their predictions are, what their contradiction rate is.
This is even worse than a paywall, because they are opposing what journalism is, in a way.
Because part of journalism is also preserving historical records. Truth-seeking means truth-keeping.
If they decide what historical truth is – or rather, what its interpretation should be – and make it no longer accessible to anyone, then they have stopped being what they claim to be.
They become just another blog site with a very nervous and self-obsessed owner.
"The Guardian takes a more subtle approach—allowing crawling but filtering archived content from public access. When you search for historical Guardian articles, you’ll hit digital dead ends."
Well, that does not sound very journalistic to me, does it? How can you verify what they write against history as it is? And not sneaking in or retrofitting to look good?
"The Times stated that archived content is being used “to directly compete with us,” but declined to specify whether this represents documented violations or hypothetical concerns."
Listen again! "Directly compete with us". That is exactly what a for-profit business would say. They are not worried that journalism is inaccessible, they are worried that they are not making enough profit!
"USA Today used the Wayback Machine to investigate ICE detention policies while simultaneously blocking the tool from preserving its own work."
Yes, that is what we call a parasitic business, not good investigative journalism.
Well, I understand why they are doing it. They want a monopoly on spreading information – regardless of being a business or not, they want it so that they, and only they, are your truth providers.
And only they should have the massive capacity to do it all, and not a million small people who are exposing their own bullshit straight away.
Okay, but what about the actual money?
Oh, of course, they have to eat something, tho.
That poses a question. Is there a possibility for them to actually sustain themselves and still be journalists?
How are they going to compete with other media, especially state media with a fat sponsor?
Being free and unpaid, potentially unappreciated work, and even actually very dangerous work.
This is work for only the true altruists or radical zealots, depending on your view.
To sustain themselves, they have to have an income source, which comes without terms and conditions.
And one that does not rely on selling off too much of what their product is.
That is a question I don’t have a good answer for.
This is the same fate as any public service: it should be funded.
However, this is actually different from public services like firefighters or the roads, because they are neutral. But any news, any media cannot be neutral by definition – they always push some agenda – and if they get publicly funded, they become servants of your government instead, not even your servants as a taxpayer. This is the path we just should not walk on.
Any kind of external money they receive becomes a point of manipulation.
If they start accepting donations, they have to bend the knee specifically for them.
And if they place a paywall, they cannot provide equal access to everyone, thus killing the core idea of journalism and becoming a blogging platform instead.
Many solutions exist, tho…
They would follow the same creator pattern where the income is what people voluntarily donate. Which is kinda similar to a subscription to news media.
Or it could be a dual purpose when one part of them focuses on real public journalism and another directly sells the actual business intelligence. However, the two must be clearly and absolutely separated, saying which part is for whom and for what purpose.
Yes, the same people could work in both departments – they just have to be clearly honest with you.
While ad income was reliable in the past, now it is no longer so, and the level of trust required to be trustworthy means you cannot just mindlessly place ads or integrate them – you have to clearly label them, which just invites banner blindness right away.
But! Reader funding is also a leash.
If your private part is depending on the public part and your readers can cancel the subscription the moment you publish something they dislike, this is just another form of advertisement.
And once again, once they start charging, they stop serving the people and start serving their shareholders.
Honestly, the real way I see how the media could be independent and still open is that they have income-generating assets like land or stocks, financial instruments or some kind of rental businesses or shares in businesses.
In other words, have an income source completely independent of their core activity.
Or at least independent enough so it does not have influence. Like a news company can also provide services for video editing or like nearby media services. But ideally not in a way that would actually hurt the journalistic integrity.
And at the same time also fully disclose everything about their money, whatever business assets they have, so everyone knows when a conflict of interest occurs.
So you clearly see when they start advertising their own product.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course – it is a very good way to sustain themselves. They just have to be honest and separate their interests right up front.
How to know which ones are good?
How do you verify that company is good or bad? See how they get their money.
First, we will see whose tune we play. Second, you would see if they have enough financial independence to play their own song.
One telling sign is whether they are profit or non-profit. They are already a massive red flag if they are structured as a for-profit.
Or if they are a subsidiary of another for-profit.
Ideally, they could have their own side business, but there should be a non-profit owning a for-profit company, so the mission of a parent non-profit is never broken.
But still, follow the incentive structure, not the legal registration.
Find out who can pull the funding and you find who plays their strings.
In the end, their reputation as an independent media, if they claim to be, should be proven by actual financial records, so everyone can actually check who pays the bills.
A good and honest company would actually pride themselves on that independence, clearly advertising it as a feature of theirs – a claim to be independent of everyone else, with a massive fuck-off power and capacity to show a middle finger to any state actor or media or whoever else.
A small guide for revolutionaries
So you’ve had a revolution. Or a massive change. You’re trying to build a fairer democratic society. And there’s this question: what do you do with the old media? The ones that were paid government money to be propaganda outlets?
Here’s the fix: give them one-time assets. Bonds, property, land, one-off tax benefits – something that generates money on its own.
You build a foundation so they’re independent from you, from the government, from everyone.
Regardless of good, bad, or whatever – you give them starting capital so they can follow their ideals first and foremost.
Some of them will get ruined, of course. Fall into being a business. At least it will be very clear which one stayed on mission and which one sold out again.
Will that help them keep away from bias? Hell no, but there is hope.
Will that keep them unbiased against all prejudices?
Well, absolutely not. And there is no point in trying to do so.
Nobody is perfect and every media will have a bias anyway.
However, the financial independence will allow them to keep their bias consistent with what they believe in as opposed to what the market or external actors dictate.
Everyone is biased anyway. Everyone is going to be pushing their own agenda, but with a truly independent media, you could at least have an expectation that their agenda is genuinely consistent with their own vision and not whoever pays them.
And the less their income source depends on public opinion, the better.
If their business is even partially dependent on their reputation, then they could become people-pleasers too.
A truly independent media is one that can, in theory, be absolutely batshit crazy and still sustain itself.
The very capacity to be crazy is also required to actually be good and trustworthy.
Yes, that might sound undemocratic, but it is the opposite: the only way they can speak the truth without fear is if they receive no punishment for speaking it.
Truly independent media requires being financially insulated from its own audience.