The Truth About Paywalls: Can News Readership and Subscribership Survive?

A collection of different news apps. (Wesley Fryer/Flickr)

Putting news behind a paywall has become standard in 21st century media and journalism. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, nearly 66 percent of leading news sources in the United States and the European Union are behind a paywall. But is this “paying” off as much as sources expect?

Apparently, most subscribers are fairly short-lived. A survey of data from Piano via the Nieman Lab showed that close to 33 percent of subscribers cancel their subscription within 24 hours. Not only that, but a further 40 percent of subscribers were “sleepers,” or subscribers that hadn’t been on the site in over 30 days. These “sleepers” are considered “high risk” for canceling their subscription because they are not getting the value out of the site, and most sites bill subscribers on a monthly basis. 

Subscribers also don’t influence something like SEO or an algorithm as heavily as readership and clicks. Google, Facebook, and Amazon collect 90 percent of all money from internet ads and base their algorithms on high clicks and engagement in order to maximize profit. Moreover, high prices for readership, especially on local news sources, actually drive readers away, which results in poor performance on social media algorithms and search engines.

While most of the country has access to free versions of their local news sources and national and international news sources, significant pieces of poorer communities lack local news sources at all, leaving residents at the mercy of free and accessible news, which is comprised overwhelmingly of fake news sources online. The subscriber model has essentially put the truth behind a paywall, ensuring only the most privileged get access to consistent and reliable news. 

COVID-19 also inspired several big news sources to drop their paywalls, only to reinstate them at an arbitrary point — which more often than not left poor tastes in readers’ mouths.

 Some sources have actively begun dropping their paywalls, such as business publication Quartz. “Quartz’s mission is to make business better, and our journalism is focused on that,” Zach Seward, the chief executive, said. He added, “The more we think about the best way to accomplish that mission, it seems clear to us that it is by making that journalism, all of those resources, as widely available to as many people as we can.” 

All eyes are most certainly on Quartz to try and aid the ailing journalism industry–with 73 percent of subscribers in danger of canceling at any moment, news sources will need to get creative if they want to have a place in the future.