Lesson learned

Pay walls are a concept that I didn’t know much about before the presentation last Monday. Terry said that 35% of all news organizations have pay walls in place today and the concept is actually what keeps the New York Times afloat today. “The best journalism news can create” should come with a price, shouldn’t it? I think that for more people to subscribe and pay for their news online, society needs to realize how much work goes into the art of writing and reporting. When thinking about this, I though of an original idea. What if the New York Times has a reporter write a piece that covered the entire reporting process in depth. Picking a story that would typically run on the front page and walking the reader through how much effort goes into it. Emphasizing why it shouldn’t just be available for free could prove to be a telling, unique angle. The concept of free online news may have worked when people were at least paying for print subscriptions, but it’s outrageous for people to think that they should get away with paying nothing for news. It’s also crazy to think that this mindset of “the right to free news” is widespread. I often wonder what my news consumption and thoughts would be like if I wasn’t a journalism major. Maybe restricting all content will force people into appreciating how much they need journalists and their trained writing skills, reliable sourcing of information, and unbiased stance.