More and more U.S. media outlets are putting up paywalls, charging either for all their content (Wired, Bloomberg, New York) or for a premium slice of it (Quartz, The Atlantic, Medium, Business Insider, BuzzFeed News). It’s fair to guess the average person won’t subscribe to more than one or two of them, especially since a recession in the U.S. is expected within the next couple of years.
We may, then, be on the verge of a tipping point. The attention economy that has been driving the media industry for much of the past decade — fueling everything from BuzzFeed and its imitators to the digital strategies of traditional publishers — may be about to give way to a more old-fashioned economy, in which the scarcest resource is once again people’s money, not their time.
In some ways, this is a good thing. The attention economy is toxic. It’s responsible for garbage content, fake news, and the excessive power of the giant social-media platforms. Competing for money forces media to think about how to give their users long-term value instead of short-term gratification — about how to serve communities instead of serving up crap. Some clickbait farms will close (if they haven’t already). We’ll see interesting new business models and more real engagement with users.
But things might not look so rosy a couple of years down the line.
Two obvious big things are different from the last time the media industry was primarily a money economy, back when print was still dominant. Advertising revenue has collapsed, so it can no longer subsidize subscriptions as it once did. And everything is digital, so many more media outlets are now competing in the same arena.
This means the competition for those subscription dollars will be much more intense. Local news outlets, already on life support, will find it especially hard to compete with national ones. National outlets will find that it pays more to serve certain communities well rather than try for the widest audience; this will make them more selective about what they cover and possibly cut out some journalism that’s important to smaller or poorer groups.
In this money economy, an “iTunes for news” (offering paywalled content from a range of publishers for a few cents per story, like Blendle), or a “Netflix/Spotify for news” (all-you-can-eat for a monthly flat fee) might finally get traction in the U.S. For years, such bundling models have struggled to take off because they don’t add enough revenue for most publishers to bother with them. As competition for subscribers heats up, publishers may start to see bundling platforms as a good way to reach the customers who won’t shell out for a full subscription. For users, meanwhile, they’ll provide access to more outlets without paying full price for each one.
However, these iTunes- or Netflix-style platforms aren’t likely to be good for publishers. On them, media outlets won’t be competing with one another to offer the best subscription package. Instead, their individual stories will battle it out for the audience’s favor in gladiatorial combat similar to that in which songs compete on iTunes or movies and shows compete on Netflix — or, for that matter, everything competes on the non-paywalled internet.
In other words, just when publishers have started to undo the atomization of content that the internet created, these platforms will atomize it once again. That will undermine the publishers’ efforts to build new business models around sustainable relationships with communities of people. And it will push down the price of content, just as the internet’s consolidated ad markets pushed down the price of advertising.
Regardless of whether this sort of bundling becomes popular, the trend towards paywalls will be great for media consumers — or at least for some of them. They’ll be getting less clickbait-y drivel and, in exchange for modest sums of money, more content produced with their actual needs in mind.
However, people from whom it’s hard to make money — especially local communities and marginalized groups — might lose out. The worst of the clickfarms and the fake news mills won’t go away; in fact, they’ll thrive, because they’ll have less competition in the cutthroat programmatic advertising market after the slightly less terrible outlets die off. And for the higher-quality media, it will — as always — be an interesting time, but not an easier one. Paywalls don’t solve the problem of survival; they just change it.
Gideon Lichfield is editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review.
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south