It's not my fault that 99% of all internet businesses figured that bait and switch is a sound business plan. It really isn't.
They should have read some basic human psychology: it's extremely hard or impossible to take something away that was given for free for a long time. That's basic knowledge. My history and psychology teacher shared this tidbit with the class when I was in the 9th grade.
Furthermore, me and many others are not closed to the idea of paying for journalism but are not willing to track 20 subs across different services.
Bill me through my ISP. I'll pay it. Make an app tracking how much extra I'd pay the next month because I've read 5 FT, 3 WSJ and 7 NYT articles -- I want to know. Even better, put a banner beforehand: "Reading this article will add $0.05 to your monthly internet bill, press OK if you agree".
The technical and societal solutions are there. But the unfettered greed and everyone's desire to be the one and only still prevail. Hence: yes, I will expect free journalism until things change.
At the risk of belaboring my point, even if what you say is true this attitude is a root cause of this unfortunate situation.
Good journalism isn’t fungible — it costs money to produce. When we actively choose to not pay for media, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the awful biased or clickbait junk that results.
We are on a discussion board. I'm not going to pay for every paywall to access every article, and if a journalist wants me to read and discuss their article, it needs to not be paywalled.
You could say that posting a paywalled article on a discussion board is just an ad for paywall subs.
