The Pay Wall

I like browsing around in Google News, scanning headlines and clicking here or there on links to interesting looking articles. More and more, once I go to a website like the New York Times or the Washington Post, I encounter a paywall, which keeps me from reading the article until I sign up for a paid subscription. As if I had enough money to buy a subscription for every web site that I encounter this way.  It would cost me hundreds of dollars a month.

I know.  We used to pay for newspapers delivered to the full gutters of the streets in front of our houses, or somewhere near the base of our driveway. We would read them while eating a bowl of cereal (your routine may vary,) and do the crossword puzzle. But that was the paper from our home town.  It was understandable that we were all willing to pay by the month to have it delivered to our doorstep, or even somewhere vaguely on our property.

But this is the Internet. There are thousands of web sites that provide information of some sort, and the customary way of reading them is to browse. People are always referring to "browsing" the Internet. It doesn't seem reasonable to buy a monthly subscription to a site just because one stumbles across it via a link somewhere. I'm not saying all this stuff should be free.  Just that it's a goofy business model.

Of course if I love a certain site and I read something on it every day, I suppose I might want to get a subscription. As it is, though, when I click on a link supplied by Google or Facebook and it leads me to a news article, say, that throws up a paywall after showing me a couple paragraphs, that seems more like an advertisement for that web site, and not a useful link at all. Just more click-bait. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I say this all the time, but what's maddening is that I already pay for the medium that is bringing me this junk.

I'll end this with the idea that I already understand these companies aren't required to give out free stuff. It only seems that way because that's how the Internet started. And it all seemed great at the time--but not that great.


I want to add that the two sites I specifically mentioned, NYT and WP, probably are worthy of any reasonable subscription fees they might levy, and they're not the only ones.  It just really gets funny when other, perhaps lesser well known, sites have the nerve to even act like they should get money from anyone for subjecting them to their misspelled headlines, horrid grammar and sloppy and ill-conceived articles. That would be like me charging you to read this blog. Please.