There is a slow, deliberate change taking place on the internet. Not all that long ago, most digital publishers offered 'free' content, focusing on the sale of ads. This model is not a good revenue generator for the majority of websites. Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal switched to a paid model, and the New York Times also has a pay wall, one which is somewhat porous. Many of the digerati feel all content on the internet can, or should be, 'free'.
The Economist is a publishing outfit which has spent much time analyzing this market and how to approach it. I have read The Economist for years and I respect their views and analysis. They recently moved to the subscriber model, as well.
Technically, most publishers are not 'free', since they use advertising to cover their costs of business. But there's a cost to you, the reader, with advertising. It's a subtle cost, one which impacts the amount of readable material and sometimes even the editorial content. The alternative, a subscriber model, is something internet users rarely encounter. For some reason, people are comfortable subscribing to magazines, newspapers, and even cable TV. Radio remains one of the few 'free' media, and even that is changing as XM/Sirius slowly becomes popular (it was included as a 'free' trial for a year with our new car). However, on the internet, it's not uncommon to hear people ask for 'free' access.
Should news and information remain 'free', and, if not, why would anyone be upset if it isn't? Many of my friends who work in the media industry have lamented the move to subscriber models. I point out a simple fact. If they were willing to pay for the paper or magazine, why wouldn't they be willing to pay for the online version? Is there some difference in the delivery system that eliminated costs?
There are very few online sources which employ journalists, or any kind of massive infrastructure (such as Maggie's), and have the ability to survive simply on revenue from advertising. In fact, most subscriber based media leverage a subscriber base to 'qualify' their audience to advertisers, to create multiple revenue streams. Forbes magazine, for example, has a wildly different subscriber base than People. It is that very difference which allows Forbes to cultivate their advertisers. Information collected in the subscription process is utilized to improve the value of the advertising. Multiple revenue streams are a sign of healthy business.
Some forms of digital information or entertainment simply don't conform to a pure advertising model.
Examples would be children's programming (even though I work in media, I spent over 5 years in children's entertainment and the advertising model has become questionable with the 'social awareness' regarding kids' programming, as many companies have become wary of advertising to children), news, and opinion.
There are various reasons for this. First is scale. Scale is probably the biggest reason any website fails at advertising. Any site with fewer than 1.5 million unique visitors each month is unlikely to survive very long on a strict ad model. This tends to afflict opinion sites, primarily because unless you are a known entity (George Will for example), you aren't likely to have a large enough audience to provide advertisers reach into the broader audience they seek. Most opinion providers require distribution under a larger banner such as the New York Times or WSJ. Scale is one reason Arianna Huffington utilized 'free' journalists to build the Huffington Post. By keeping her costs down, she could leverage smaller scale and grow organically.
Another is editorial freedom. It's hard for any news or opinion to remain untouched by the hand of advertisers. If we expect some degree of fairness and honesty from our commentators and journalists, we have to hope they are not completely tied into their advertising revenue. In this sense, having the subscriber model makes for better content. It certainly would do nobody any good if the news buried the "Pink Slime" story because the firm which made it was their largest advertiser. Of course, there's the flip side, where news outlets deliberately attack their advertisers for no apparent reason. Airlines approach editorial management in a unique fashion. Usually, they request their ads be pulled down when crashes occur.
Finally, there is the issue of context. Some publishers have no scruples and will put whatever they can make money from up on the screen. Legitimate publishers will differentiate between real news reporting and paid stories, but some may not. If publishers were to rely only on paid stories, it wouldn't be long before every major news site's pages were full of PR pieces from providers of manufactured goods and services. This arrangement occurs more frequently than most people realize, though usually it is flagged somehow to inform readers the piece is a paid insertion.
I believe most of Maggie's readers support companies earning revenue in whatever fashion the market can support, whether it's via advertising, subscription, or both. Most of us probably have no problems subscribing to our favorite news outlets. But the early years of the internet only served to support and further develop a culture of information moochers which the industry is now dealing with. It's hard to convince people that they are not entitled to 'free stuff' once they've had it for so long. Information, despite claims that it should be 'free', is never free. There is a cost to collecting it, a cost to transmitting it, and a cost to you for receiving it (though sometimes that cost is only time).
