I am an unashamed freeloader. Years ago I stopped buying newspapers and now get all my information from the internet (note the new lower-case i, even the internet has been demoted). I don’t bother worrying about newspapers or magazines that sit behind a firewall, I just go somewhere else. This all works well; there is so much free information out there—in particular up-to-the-minute news—that paying to read seems so old fashioned. I realise my views are rather unconventional, some would say anarchic, but I resent paying for something that is available free elsewhere, just around the mouse click.
Now we are facing a backsplash from outraged publishers. I hesitate to call it a backlash, it’s just a tiny splash at the moment. Some newspaper sites are apparently telling visitors to uninstall ad-blocking software before they can access their sites. A campaign in France includes newspapers such as Le Monde, Le Parisien and L’Équipe. I even came across one web site, to which I had been lured by a link, telling me I should disable Adblocker immediately or pay the publishers $1 a month for the privilege of reading their site. I declined and moved on to some other bit of free information. It probably wasn’t important anyway.
Plummeting
Nonetheless, I can understand their position. Advertising is plummeting, sales are falling. But they make a big mistake if they think they can replace that revenue with paying guests from the internet. I have news for them. The war is lost.
I am also well aware of all the arguments about the labourer worthy of his hire and the cry that if we don’t pay we don’t get quality news and information. In many cases where we do pay we get dubious quality and misinformation. But I’m not going to be setting my neck on the block here. I’ll grab what I can while its free and, if necessary, go elsewhere. And when the supply dries up I’ll listen to gossip and make up my own mind.
For too long publishers have held us to ransom, charging for their publications and forcing us to read their advertising. Now, suddenly, the world finds that it can be informed (sometimes in a far more entertaining and no less reliable fashion) by free media. The genie is now out of the bottle and there will always be someone to provide free information. Don’t give up just yet.
When I first read this story I thought that it was posted on 1st April but I then realised that it was for real .I could not disagree with the views expressed more strongly. I am in despair at the loss of quality journalism and its replacement by gossip,spin and the outpourings of rank amateurs.
I loved and still love quality newspapers and magazines .Unlike Mike I have never been forced to read advertising in print media ( it’s easy to avoid Mike – you turn the page).
We are in danger of losing all investigative journalism. Corruption is flourishing worldwide and the amateurs who inhabit the Internet are not shining their lights into dark places.No they are feeding us third rate twaddle.
Yesterday I flew fromSydney to Perth a flight of just under 5 hours .The latest print edition of the UK magazine Motor Sport enthralled me for most of the flight .In it I read road tests of the latest cars by a paid professional journalist who I have read for years and whom I know knows what his talking about. I read some interesting motor sport history – also written by experts and I browsed some really interesting ads for cars I covert. The free internet could not have given me the same- no way
I’ll take an Economist ,Sydney Morning Herald, or New York Times opinion piece over any internet opinion piece by A Jerk any day thank you.
And carrying Mike’s thesis to its ultimate conclusion next time he has a plumbing issue presumably he’ll just pull in someone off the street without any regard for his training to fix the problem."No skills? No worries mate.You’re doing it for free and that’s all that matters."
If paid journalism was not in such dire straits Donald Trump would have been on the ropes weeks ago .
Sadly Mike may well be right .The war may well be lost.But we will all be the poorer for it.
So in five years time when you are desperately searching online for an insightful investigation of some issue of importance and all you can find are stories about the colour of Kim Kardashians panties reflect we bought this upon ourselves.
Must finish now-there’s some really cute new videos of kittens on You Tube I have to watch. Beats thinking any day.
Since I wrote this and not Mike I’d better respond. I try to see both sides but none of my friends pay for newspaper subscriptions these days. There is still a lot out there for free. Still, it’s a matter of personal preference. My main point was in connection with sites which block entrance until you disable adblocking software. It’s up to them, of course, but they will gradually lose exposure in the world. People will just go elsewhere.
As far as I am concerned, the internet has always been just a collection of computer networks, or rather an inter-network, I have never thought of it as a proper noun. It is really an evolution of the telephone system.
For many years, my father had a mobile phone, which he kept in the boot of his car, switched off…
… "that way, the battery and the credit lasted for ever, and it would be useful if he broke down whilst out and about…" 🙂
He would not believe that even switched off, the battery still eventually runs down, neither would he accept that his credit was being used even when HE wasn’t using it. But more importantly, he would not accept my premise, that if everyone used the mobile network like him, it wouldn’t exist.
It is the same with the internet, people make some of their data available to others and we are all able to do what we wish with that… If some publishers wish to charge us for that and effectively block that from view for us to make use of, they will rapidly become irrelevant.
Not only will they be in charge of dead tree publications, they will be proud possessors of dead publications, and irrelevant.
Of course, it doesn’t help that many of the publications that have put themselves behind a paywall in recent years have spent most of the recent past merely cutting and pasting from various agencies… i.e. there is very little coming from these "publishers" that stretched their employees in any relevant way.
You are right Jason, to look elsewhere, to publications like this one from Macfilos for instance for anything more interesting… At least it contains original thoughts, experience, good writing and also backchat from readers, and concentrates on matters that interest the readers.
Those dead tree publications have long been merely vehicles for the advertising of the international corporations, and propaganda from local government..
The internet, enables us to look around the world and see more of what is really happening.
Long live decent blogging…
Death to er… dead trees… 😉
Now all we have to wait for is the demise of all those "social networks", which are about as useful as a bicycle is to a fish.