Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/most-americans-dont-pay-for-news-and-dont-think-they-need-to/

by jaredwiener • 5 months ago

64 43 5 months ago

There is indeed a lot of really good free news, but you just know the free content consumers are getting their news from schizophrenic conspiracy theorists on social media.

Basically, people need to evaluate news as a utility, not a service or something that will just reach them. Definitely not entertainment. That means you need to evaluate the accuracy, and vote with your wallet. Any free, or publicly available option, will be compermised, because they're not aligned with your interests.

wolvoleo3• 5 months ago

I kinda agree with them. I'm not in the US and I don't normally pay for news but I recently signed up to the guardian because they had a promotion.

But they started spamming my mailbox immediately with stupid stuff like cooking apps. And they ask all sorts of stuff about my interests. I don't want any of that. But once they know who I am it opens the door to their marketeers to try and extract more money from me.

It's better if I visit the site not logged in with all adblockers active. I do have to agree to tracking then but the adblocker blocks most of that.

It's just weird that I have a better experience if I don't pay than if I do. And it's really expensive, the promotional thing is 6€, and that's a limited time only, the normal price is 12€. I don't read it that much, I just like their take on things sometimes. I read the front page a couple times a week maybe. And sometimes open up an article.

I'll probably cancel when the 6€ thing stops. To be honest I hate reading the news these days anyway. I'd rather not keep up.

chii• 5 months ago

It's just weird that I have a better experience if I don't pay than if I do.

not if you look from the POV of an advertiser.

If you don't pay, chances are you would not have money to spend on goods being advertised. But if you are rich enough to afford to be a subscriber, chances are you'd be rich enough to buy those goods being advertised!

Therefore, a subscriber is a much more valuable advertising target, which means the guardian can sell you for a higher price than a free user. Given limited real-estate and resources, they'd target a higher value person than a low value person to send the spam.

MathMonkeyMan• 5 months ago

This is something I always assumed but thought was cynical. But it's true. Willing to pay for no ads? High value ad target.

rf15• 5 months ago

But they started spamming my mailbox immediately with stupid stuff like cooking apps. And they ask all sorts of stuff about my interests

Weird, I also subscribed and got nothing like that. Are you sure you're not reading it wrong/subscribed via a rentseeking third party?

arethuza2• 5 months ago

I've been subscribed to the Guardian for a while and I think that's a bit harsh - yes they offer the cooking app (which I looked at and I don't use) but apart from that the contact from them has been perfectly reasonable?

wolvoleo3• 5 months ago

I think the rest of the comms was triggered by me just signing up. But I would deem that negative, I didn't sign up because I wanted to personalise or deepen my interaction, just to send some cash their way.

For example: On the guardian website when I created my account it defaulted me to on for sending me communications my post, phone and SMS about their products and services and for marketing research. I find that unacceptable.

They offer an "Unsubscribe from all email" button but this is only available in their online settings, if you click on an unwanted email and unsubscribe there, the above settings remain on.

And it was just an example. It's just every time I sign up for something it's not just that, I also have to unsubscribe for a bunch of mailing lists and surveys I never asked for. And go through all the privacy settings and turn off all the crap where they use my information. Sometimes even periodically like on LinkedIn where they keep adding new settings that default to on.

CoastalCoder• 5 months ago

I had a similar experience with the Providence Journal Bulletin some years back.

I subscribed out of a general desire to support good journalism, but it did nothing to reduce the deluge of online ads.

I can't entirely fault them though. They might not have had enough market info at the time to justify making a reduced-ads variant of their website for subscribers.

Aromasin• 5 months ago

Long-form news outlets (ie, weekly/monthly/quarterly release) tend to not fall into that scummy, data-mining behaviour the daily news outlets do from my experience. Subscribe to something like the Economist, Private Eye (if in the UK), the Atlantic, or Delayed Gratification instead. They tend to hire well reasoning journalists that do research with due dilligence.

BobbyTables2• 5 months ago

The news isn’t the product being sold — it’s actually the subscriber.

h4kunamata• 5 months ago

Based on interviews with US based teachers, "soon" Americans won't care for news altogether because they cannot read.

Teachers don't know what to do while ChatGPT took over universities.

harimau7772• 5 months ago

Doesn't using ChatGPT require you to be able to read and write?

yojat661• 5 months ago

No. It has a voice mode.

aeternum• 5 months ago

Paid news is a mostly no longer trusted in the US.

sometimes_all• 5 months ago

I am not American. I pay for news, specifically business news. I subscribe to US, UK and Indian news websites.

Both the US and UK feel free to show me ads even when I've paid a bomb in terms of subscription costs. Not subtle ads of their own products! Top banner ads, middle-of-page scrolling ads, and the like, of whichever fancy watch or lifestyle destination has paid the most money to them. And then they have the gall to write opinion pieces on how ad-based AI and streaming channels are the bane of the world. Plus they feel free to subscribe me to a bunch of their newsletters and podcasts which I have to manually unsubscribe from. One of them actually pedals courses on how to write good.

The Indian news sites have no barrier on what is a paid piece and what is actually news. Promoted pieces occupy the same slots as paid ones. I've seen blatant advertisements masquerading as actual reporting.

I understand that news has been gutted by tech. But there is a need to be honest to a paying customer; if not, they deserve whatever has come to them.

rootusrootus• 5 months ago

I pay a few bucks for NYT but it’s mostly for the games. I’d be more willing to pay for a good news source if they’d actually turn ads off for me. But no.

opto• 5 months ago

Pay licence fee, read BBC news

charlie-83• 5 months ago

You don't even need a TV license for BBC news.

ralferoo• 5 months ago

Correction: for the BBC News website. You most definitely do for the BBC News TV channel.

AngryData• 5 months ago

Often it is just a waste of money. If people could pay money and know they will get better news than from free sources, maybe they would. But currently you can pay money on multiple different paid news sources and still receive all of the same inaccurate garbage and marketing as the free sources.

dmitrygr• 5 months ago

Seeing news reports on things that you yourself have personally witnessed, and seeing how distorted the reports are compared to what you saw yourself — it will radicalize you. I not only don’t want to pay for the “news”, I want to burn down most of the news establishments, and then make sure that no more than 5g of the ash is ever in one place at a time, on the off chance they try to pull a T1000 and recombine.

lenkite• 5 months ago

If you are going to be the product, why pay for the product ?

armchairhacker2• 5 months ago

Why logically read the news?

- “Breaking” news directly relevant to your life: spreads through other channels

- Lessons on how the world works (systems etc.) that you can apply locally: in practice, embarrassingly most news sources omit key facts and are light on details, and push a narrative which is misleading, so the implicit lessons you’d form are counter-productive. This is inevitable because accurate news is more boring than exaggerated outrage narratives; companies doing the former are out-competed, not just economically, but in popularity (so don’t blame Capitalism, because even if they have sustainable income, they’re outranked in social media feeds). Moreover, events and their context become clearer long after they occur, so “news”, even from the most ideal source, can never be the best way to learn systems.

Most people actually read the news because it’s cheap dopamine, so in a way, news sources adding paywalls are doing their readers a favor.

elsjaako2• 5 months ago

I pay for a (local, non-english) newspaper. The reporting certainly isn't perfect, but:

- They seem less sensationalist, I guess because they don't depend on clicks to survive - They tell a more complete, less dumbed down story than free sources - They are more boring than free sources

If you want to be informed, the "pay for journalists" model is much better than "hope that advertisers or billionaires pay for you" model.

You can argue that being informed is pointless, but I would argue that independent people working to get informed and then questioning issues is a vital point in a democracy. One model for this is journalists, even if you're not actually reading it.

armchairhacker2• 5 months ago

Local news is different, because it’s more relevant, and moreover we rely on journalists to uncover hidden problems.

I don’t really need to hear about an event or problem happening across the globe, although it could have an important lesson, but I really don’t need to hear about it in a misleading, sensationalist way.

assaddayinh• 5 months ago

The problem is the news going publicly against and decrying journalists. Specifically youtube reporters going against the grain of propaganda narratives. I dont want to pay for some "moscow times" government mouth piece.

fluidcruft• 5 months ago

That's sort of the way I feel also. Whether it's the Russians, Chinese, CIA, Murdocks, Bezos, whatever. They're all run by interests and, well, the interests don't need my money to do whatever it is they are doing.

metalman• 5 months ago

news?

propaganda?

press releases?

paid "editorials"?

wall to wall adds for shit?

pay me!

otikik• 5 months ago

Why would I want to pay to be depressed/afraid/anxious? I can already do that very well on my own.

dotslashmain• 5 months ago

LOL, yes! I often think of my "information diet" and the news just feels like pure junk food. I can go to my public library (or a few places on the internet) and stuff my head with healthy information.

tonyedgecombe• 5 months ago

I sometimes wonder if the state should pay for news. Not directly but issue a voucher to every citizen which they can spend on whatever media they prefer.

rickcarlino• 5 months ago

Consumers have shown a willingness to pay for other types of premium content via NetFlix and similar. Have any of these outlets considered launching a news agency within their platform? Eg: “Hulu Nightly News”.

lopis• 5 months ago

I do enjoy listening to DW's podcasts. It's more succinct and informative, and less news'tertainement, ads, emotional manipulation and filler.

vintermann• 5 months ago

If they think of their readers as "consumers", they will double-dip. It's often said that if you aren't paying, you are the product - but unfortunately just because you're paying, doesn't mean you aren't still the product.

It seems to me that rich people (and some other powerful groups) are paying far more to own media companies (X, WaPo, etc.) than can be justified by those companies' revenue. It's not hard to imagine what they get in return.

harimau7772• 5 months ago

I'd pay for news if there were any at least semi-mainstream left wing news sources. However, I'm not going to pay for enlightened centrism liberal BS.

58028641• 5 months ago

Drop Site News, Ken Klippenstein, and Zeteo are left wing sources.

BoredPositron• 5 months ago

Get a library card there are usually news archives bundled. In Germany we have a browser plugin that replaces gated articles with the one that is available in the archive. https://stefanw.github.io/bibbot/

theanonymousone• 5 months ago

I'm pretty sure it's not just Americans.

Just like open source didn't destroy quality software, maybe there an alternative model for journalism lying somewhere?

dfansteel• 5 months ago

If I’m going to pay for News, I want to never see another advertisement so long as I live.

hulitu• 5 months ago

Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to

Well, actual news are 1% of the "news". The rest is opinion pieces, propaganda and paid articles. Those who benefit from opinion pieces, propaganda and paid articles shall pay for it.

Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to

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