If you are going to get a subscription, make it an independent or non-profit organization
I’m a bit of a news fiend. I’ve got dozens of RSS feeds, I follow a number of news organizations across social media, and, if you haven’t guessed, I write this blog. I love the news. I love knowing everything that’s happening in the world, in politics, with tech, human interest, everything. I have always been an information sponge, and the news is constantly evolving streams of information.
So, naturally, I have opinions about subscriptions when it comes to news. If I had to pay for all the sites I use to collect news, I’d have no money left for food, having spent hundreds of dollars on news. Why the hell is it harder to get real news than the disinformation campaigns of the far right? You often won’t see a paywall on inflammatory hate sites, at least on the stories they want to push (although, perhaps they needed them), but real information is behind a paywall. Knowledge should not be so expensive.
Now, my real solution for this would be a government that cares about educating its population. A government that invests in knowledge always finds it comes back with plentiful returns. However, certain parties are extremely against education, and the other benefits from right-leaning propaganda as well. Dumb, misinformed people are easier to control. So, “socialism” is a scare word, and we can’t subsidize the news properly.
But what we can do is make the news more accessible by making it more affordable. Doing so will not only increase revenue sources, but it will give people the ability to pay what they can and when they can.
It’s time we supplement subscriptions how we used to: pay per read. Because newspapers didn’t struggle when you received your subscription in the mail or could buy a newspaper off a newsstand. But when your only option is an expensive subscription, you’re out of luck. Back in the day, you could plop down some change and read a newspaper. Why don’t we bring that back?
I’m saying we need to be able to pay for the stories we read, so we can expand access to information, even for the people who can’t afford 12 news subscriptions totaling over $200/month. Let’s bring back the newsstand.
A New Newsstand
Apple tried to bring back the newsstand once, but they clearly had no idea what a newsstand is. They offered a variety of magazine subscriptions and one or two newspapers as a bulk subscription. I don’t know about you, but the guy at the newsstand doesn’t just let me take whatever I want for a monthly fee. Instead, he’d charge me for what I want.
I actually do read magazines. I’ve got a few subscriptions. But I also buy them on occasion. I also have a few news subscriptions. But I can’t subscribe to every newspaper and magazine I want. I can’t put my money into every organization with journalistic integrity I want to support every month. I just don’t have the money for it. Most people don’t.
But I have a few bucks to buy a magazine every once in a while. Perhaps once a quarter. I could buy a copy of a newspaper if I wanted. So why can’t I do something like that digitally?
Buy Access When You Need It
It’s simple. I’m stating that, on top of a monthly subscription, news websites have to open themselves up to the idea of their customers being occasional buyers. Maybe you can’t subscribe to Wired to read every article, but When you see one you really want to read, wouldn’t you pay $0.99 for it and get access to perhaps a few others. It’ll give you your money’s worth, and let you get a taste of what you could get if you do subscribe, all while allowing you to just support a newspaper once. I see this similar to the way I’ll toss money towards publicly funded publications when I can, but don’t donate on a regular basis. Opening people up to cheaper options that allows them access to the most important information will make news more accessible. It’ll also make companies more money.
Maybe then they wouldn’t waste so much time and money on that AI trash.
When news subscriptions tell the public it’s “all or nothing,” most people choose nothing. Where has that gotten us? A polarized political landscape of misinformed bigots trampling on everyone’s rights and safety. Journalists begging to write just one little piece for a news website, maybe enough to pay their share of the rent this month. AI filling our feeds with slop. Is that what we want?
Bring back the newsstand. Bring back access to knowledge. Just let us buy a few articles instead of rifling through our barren wallets every month. Because while people can’t afford a dozen news subscriptions, the world sure as hell can’t afford to let people continue to be this misinformed.