If You Believe in Journalism, Pay For It

I generally avoid paying for anything I can get for free. I don’t consider myself cheap, just sensible. This quality has led me over the years to become a serial hoarder of logins/passwords for media outlets. Doing what I do for a living, I’ve always had access to every media outlet I’ve needed in order to do my job. We’d all share passwords with each other, expense any new subscription to our employer, and avoid shelling out our own money at all costs. When I was young and starting out, it was a necessity. Over time, it simply became the norm.

But when we ALL do this, where does that leave the media industry? Good journalism costs money, after all, and reporters and editors need to be paid for their work. Over the past 25 years the advertising model that previously sustained the industry has been completely upended — first by the rise of the Internet and more recently by the sheer dominance of Google and Facebook. Through it all, legitimate media outlets have struggled to overcome the original mistake they made in the 1990s, when they simply gave away their content online instead of conditioning consumers that quality news and information was something worth paying for.

As Craigslist and other message boards were decimating the old classifieds sections of newspapers and new online-only media outlets were starting up, established outlets slowly lost their monopoly over news and information. This shift certainly had some benefits, but the rise of social media eventually created a world in which a rant from your insane neighbor can look the same on your Facebook feed as breaking news from The New York Times. The “democracy of ideas” sounds like a great concept, until you realize many of those ideas have no basis in fact, and that over time it leads to thousands of great journalists getting laid off and quality news outlets shutting down every year.

All of which leads me to this morning, when I logged into three new sites, typed in my personal credit card information, and hit the subscribe button. For a year of high quality, smart writing and solid journalism from people whose work I believe in, I spent the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries. Not nothing, for sure. And not something everyone can afford to do all the time. But if we want a well-informed society, some of us have to, sometimes. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. If I’m going to constantly bemoan the state of the media industry, it’s important to walk the walk.