dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

You are heard. Listening. Reading, watching, observing, and putting word out.

Lots of games are being played, and trying to talk as much as possible, interacting which sometimes thins an anon out w other duties, but ultimately we got this. Future is bright, will be easier personally for me soon, freer mind.. will share the post. Always ask anons over, they are scared to post. I said to one, maybe i was either too dumb or just didnt give a fuck when i posted and baked and all.. i just never really cared we were watched cause knew we had been for so long that did it really matter and /team/ is on our side of the fight.. guess what is there to worry about?

Anywho will be back and trying to get stuff i need done done, gotta unsnarl the computer today if i can.

>>110303

https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-ethics-of-news-paywalls/

The Ethics of News Paywalls

Media Ethics

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Kat Williams

Graduate Research Assistant

Scott R. Stroud

Program Director of Media Ethics, Knight Faculty Fellow

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CASE STUDY: Should We Pay For News in Our Digital Democracy?

Case Study PDF | Additional Case Studies

Everyone has experienced it. While searching for information online you finally come across a news headline that looks like it will provide the exact answers to the questions you’ve been itching to know. Excitedly, you click on the link and begin reading, but before you can finish the first couple of lines – Pop! – A paywall obstructs the rest of the article and you are forced to either pay a fee for full access or abandon the site and continue your search elsewhere. Though this encounter may seem only like a trivial inconvenience, the ethics of news paywalls extends far past simple annoyances.

Around the early 1990s, owning a computer was becoming commonplace for many American households. To keep up with the times, mass media outlets began creating websites where readers could now access stories on the Internet in addition to traditionally printed newspapers. At first, these companies were just happy to be part of the digital scene, but soon, profitability became an issue. Because information was now available for free from the comfort of one’s own home, many consumers stopped going out to purchase newspapers and consequently, news outlets saw huge declines in profits. Online forums such as Craigslist also took a large bite out of the classified advertising revenues that traditionally supported newspapers. To make up for such losses in print media, online news companies turned to digital advertising. While this method worked for a while, the irritating experience of being bombarded by noisy pop-ups led to the rise of users installing ad-blocking software which has “severely damaged the ability of such news sites to make money from advertising” (Felle, 2016).

Due to the problems surrounding digital advertising, “publishers have embraced a ‘pivot to readers’ and explored ways to generate more revenue from [the audience itself through] subscriptions and memberships” – thus, the paywall was born (Bilton, 2018). In 1996, The Wall Street Journal was the first to implement a “hard paywall,” which required readers to pay a subscription upfront or be blocked from accessing articles completely (Simon & Graves, 2019). Since then, new “soft” paywall models have been developed, such as the popular “metered paywall” where readers are given a limited number of free articles per month before the user is required to purchase access to the newspaper’s content (Howard, 2018). Regardless of the type of paywall used, the result is the same: Readers must pay the news company directly to receive access to information. According to Reuters Institute, now “more than two-thirds of leading newspapers (69%) across the E.U. and U.S. are operating some kind of online paywall, a trend that has increased since 2017, especi