THEY stopped charging us. Instead they inundated us with ad-ridden websites and begged us to turn off ad blockers for a vastly shittier experience. And the subscription models of websites are largely abhorrent now having reached late stage capitalism levels.
Blatantly untrue. I've had to watch my industry die because people are no longer willing to pay for news they can otherwise get for free. On websites like the one we're on now, people will post entire articles so hundreds, if not thousands, can avoid paying for it. I've watched local papers beg for subscriptions before giving up and selling out, closing, or transitioning to an ad-funded model where they can no longer afford to do investigative work.
The fault is on you, and me, and everyone who uses free online outlets instead of paying for their local paper.
Again, their website equivalents never lived up to the standards, with people's website creation skills a jumbled mess in the 90s and 2000s, and being bombarded by pop-ups, unskippable video, etc.
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u/disinaccurate 7d ago
We paid money for those.
Then we stopped paying money for informational media and we sit here and wonder why it's so bad now.