Democracy Dies in the Paywall

 Everybody hates paywalls, including actor John Cusack. He is a founding board member of the Free the Press Foundation, who seek to make news that should be available to all of us as common knowledge, actually available to all of us. We are talking here about exposes on government corruption and the like, but we may soon be talking about news in general. That's my fear. It might be his too. What we are not talking about is opinion pieces. I could monetize this blog, but come on now, why would I do that? Who would read it? Not me. I wouldn't pay. There are big time writers who do monetize their musings and that's good for them. There is a lot of independent news outlets that do great work and need to make a living. I certainly have no truck with that, though, again, that's generally opinion.

With newspapers barely hanging on throughout the country, and network news constantly under attack by our gawdawful, belligerent president, how much longer will we have a free press? I mean a truly free press. I know that newspapers always have cost money and that maga will point that out when the time comes that Hair Furor nationalizes all media. They've done such great work equating voting with ID, to buying beer. They'll understand. They'll be told to understand. They won't really understand though. 

But who will understand? It is looking like only those who can afford to be nickeled and dimed with the myriads of paywalls. That's not me and it's probably not you. You shouldn't have to pay to find out the details of a tragic plane crash, or a fire in your area. It's not that bad yet, but I think you can see it from here. This regime is hellbent on controlling every aspect of our lives and information is certainly paramount to them. To me it's like the balkanization of the NFL. If you want to watch games, you can have a half dozen streaming services to deal with or you go without a few games. Do you really need Apple TV or Prime to watch your team play once? Some do. I'm not one of them. The NFL just wasn't making all that they could each week from commercials and licensing. This made republican Jesus weep.

So, why not do the same thing with the news? As republicans have told me for years (even before maga) 'a CEO has a fiduciary responsibility to return a profit to stockholders- or he can go to jail!!!' While technically true, has that ever happened? Usually when they fuck up, they get 20 million dollars as severance. This country can't even put wealthy child rapists on trial. I think those CEO's are safe. 

We'll see how they work this out. It's not up to us, even if we can afford the paywall. They only want us knowing what they want us to know. And they might as well make a few bucks off of that. Right? 

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