Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, No Way!
Should all content be free?
Right off the bat let me just say that I pay for nothing. After all, don’t they say that the best things in life are free?
But then there’s the old economics adage of, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”1
So which is it?
When I was at university in the US in the mid-90s and wanted to match a Champions League match or World Cup qualifier (we’re talking football/futbol/soccer), I had to go to an Irish pub in Boston and pay a $20 cover. Matches were only available on pay-per-view so that was the only choice I had. As a student, I had two dilemmas here. One, I never had much money and that was a steep price to pay. Two, with some matches kicking off at 2.30pm local time on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d have to skip classes to watch a match (let’s be honest, that’s not really a dilemma now, is it?).
Those bars weren’t making much profit, if any, from the cover charge – it was from beer sales. And since I was under 21 and dealing with draconian American drinking laws, I was of little interest to them anyway.
I rarely forked out $20 for matches.
Plenty of people whinge these days about having to pay for content, even though there are still loads of free things out there. It does, however, seem that more and more sites are putting up paywalls to increase revenue, which only increases the grumbling.
Which is odd when you think about it, considering that before the internet – oh no, is this another grouchy old man story story? – we had to pay for newspapers and magazines, unless you were like me and had a bad shoplifting habit. (I was a naughty boy, but that’s a story for another time, perhaps - but is it any different than illegally downloading music or films, which everyone has done at some point in their life?)
I’m not a media studies expert by any means, so take my insights with a grain of salt. It’s just a rough summary as I see it, followed by my attitude towards paying for stuff.
Daniel’s ‘expert’ analysis 🤣
In the [good old?] days, newspapers relied on advertising revenue and subscription costs. In effect, it’s the same story today, but with much lower revenue from advertising. Running a newspaper, online or off, isn’t cheap.
Newspapers were a cross subsidy – in other words, advertisements placed in one section were the cash cows funding the rest of the paper. You can imagine how expensive it is to send foreign correspondents around the world and to maintain operations in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. Ads would have appeared in different sections of the paper, and there were also classified ads in the pre-internet days. Remember those? Before people started swiping right and left or up and down, before you could buy a car or look for an apartment online, before you could order crap from amazon.com (which conveniently sells my book, which isn’t completely crap), our fingers would get smudged in black ink from flipping through the pages, circling ads.
Once print newspapers declined with the rise of the internet and sites sprung up everywhere, advertising revenues plummeted because companies could target their ads elsewhere. Cars, property, dating, florist’s, dog grooming services, whatever - these didn’t need to be advertised in newspapers anymore. It was horribly inefficient from a company’s perspective.
News alone can’t pay for itself. The other newspaper sections paid for the expensive outlays. Everything was packaged together, and when that package was unwrapped, so to speak, revenues dropped, and people were laid off. Whenever the economy is in rough shape, advertising budgets are often the first things to get cut. Newspapers were so exposed to advertising that it fed back into them.
How to compensate for declining advertising revenue?
Focus more on subscription revenue.
Big nasty investment funds (in layspeak) or hedge funds and private equity to those in the know, have done their part in killing off so many newspapers. According to Bryan Curtis, editor at The Ringer and host of the Press Box podcast, today “half of all newspapers in the US are controlled by financial firms,” with their model being to “gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, lose subscribers, fold, and then write off the tax.” And before we come down too harshly on these nasty hedge fund vultures swooping in to feed off the carcasses of dying newspapers, if newspapers were performing better, these buzzards wouldn’t be coming in for the kill. (That has to be one of the best sentences I’ve ever written; I’m not even sure it’s true or I totally believe it, but I’m leaving it for you to marvel over the juicy metaphors.)
Some of the big dogs are doing fine, you know the names. But plenty of newspapers are losing subscribers and finding it hard to survive. I wonder sometimes if Substack is part of the problem in that it’s encouraged some of the bigger names to branch off and go it alone, and there are plenty of success stories to be told.
I can’t quite recall when I first heard of Substack – which started in 2017 – two years ago, perhaps? And at first, I only followed a couple of established journalists or academics, with the historian and author Timothy Snyder and Atlantic writer Olga Khazan the first two I subscribed to. Until early September, I only subscribed to five newsletters in total, and I’m now up to around 50, which is just great for my productivity! I’m not complaining – I’m learning so much, hearing from an incredible variety of diverse voices, and I’ve sacrificed my usual media diet – sorry, Atlantic – but I still make sure to check Twitter X for daily updates from @NoContextBrits and @DarthPutinKGB.
As Bryan Curtis puts it when talking about who we choose to read these days, we’re looking for “a feeling of I like this publication, these guys are my friends, I can see myself hanging out with them.”
But when I first realised that writers were charging for their content, my initial reaction was, “Pay for just one writer? That’s nuts!”
And I’ve certainly been guilty of moaning and groaning when another publication puts up a paywall and immediately start to look for workarounds and hacks to enjoy my limited number of free articles before the paywall kicks in (that means three browsers with three separate logins, but it gets confusing and is hard to keep track of what’s what).
Me pay? No way!
So why don’t I pay for content?
It’s not out of any moral principle. It’s pure economics. I haven’t got much money. Things are a bit tight these days as the royalties from my first book slowly trickle in and I’m hard at work on my second. I would love to pay for some authors, to say thanks for their work, to show my appreciation, and there will come a time, I hope, when I can, but for now…making ends meet is the goal and it’s a slow process.
Yet again, I have to say thank you to the 8 people (not a bad return, based on statistics) who have pledged subscriptions. I don’t want your money! (buy my damn book instead - never mind, 7 of you have bought it, thanks again. As for the rest of you…)
Selfishly speaking, I like the Substacks where nothing is paywalled, leaving it up to readers to decide if they want to pay. If there is other content paywalled, then of course that’s perfectly okay – this is how people are making a living, or at least some extra income. Journalism, at its heart, is a noble profession and people deserve to be rewarded if they’re doing a good job. In my next post, I’ll share a few of my favourite Substack posts so far (I don’t mean mine).
So if I’m unable to pay, then I certainly wouldn’t expect my subscribers to pay. Times may be tough, but I can’t charge for the nonsense I spout. If I’m going to charge, it will have to be for my ‘expertise’ as a teacher. Or through book sales. I’m mulling over a few other [hare-brained] ideas.
Finally - but never say never, right?
PJ O’Ryan’s Irish pub, Teele Square, Somerville, Massachusetts: those two-faced lying jerks!2
As we got into the late 90s, Champions League matches started being shown on American cable TV, which was a relief. But the international qualifiers for the World Cup or the Euros were still only pay-per-view.
PJ O’Ryan’s was a new Irish pub that opened in my neighbourhood in 2000. And their big promise was “we’ll never charge for matches – no way, never, that’s not our policy and never will be.”
Great, I thought. Finally!
1 September 2001, Germany v England, World Cup qualifier, Munich
It was a Saturday late morning, and I traipsed over to PJ O’Ryan’s in my Euro ’96 England top (it was no bad omen on this day).
And there was a sign on the door: “Cover $20”
Bastards.
I begrudgingly paid the cover and I suppose it was worth it in the end.
England won 5-1 on a Michael Owen hat-trick.
But I never went back to that wretched pub.
A bonus for my dear language learning followers
I mentioned a few ‘animals’ in this post - cash cows, big dogs, vultures, buzzards. I could’ve also included fat cat. I hope you noticed.
Other good language you might want to add to your repertoire:
right off the bat (a nice sporting idiom - can you guess which sport?)
(it’s) a steep price to pay
draconian laws or punishment (how’s your Greek history?)
forked out (when was the last time you forked out for something?)
spring up, plummet, jack up (these are not synonyms, obviously)
(royalties) trickle in, make ends meet, make a living
Lastly - do you like me? (yes, of course you do!)
If you just want to say thanks, honestly, just a simple ‘thanks,’ then you can push the like button, which is actually the heart. It’s free. And it doesn’t mean you love me, it’s just a way to say, “thanks, Daniel, for providing me with a few minutes of enlightening…enlightenment and I learnt absolutely nothing and you’re full of shit, but I was mildly entertained and…enlightened. Somewhat.”
This saying comes from the days of the Wild West when saloons would offer customers a free lunch as long as they bought a drink. They typically served overly salty food, which made the punters thirstier and thus, they would buy more beer. Sounds a bit like Substack, doesn’t it?
Two things about me: I hold grudges. And I take pleasure in boycotting places who have wronged me. Don’t go to this pub.
It's funny you should write this today Daniel as it happens to be the day I forked out for the first time for someone on Substack. I do however agree that it's an odd one. To go from buying a newspaper or magazine where you get a tonne of writers for a couple of quid to paying for individual writers' work for the same amount of money is a much bigger leap (and still different) than going from buying your toilet roll in a supermarket to subscribing to Who Gives a Crap for a monthly delivery. And yet some people are doing it (although Substack seems vague as to how many).
The paid side of Substack was the first thing I heard about it, but now that I'm in it, I hardly think about it - there's so much more to it than that. If anything I sort of separate the paid publications in my head because actually they're by big name journalists who I read in other places anyway. Instead of reading more by them, I'm actually glad to be reading the much more interesting and thought provoking pieces by us unknowns. Although I am worried that things will change on here once enough people are in - I mean does Substack make enough money just from the revenue brought in by those being paid?
All of my content is free but I don't expect that from others. Many rely on subscriptions for income and that's reasonable. That being said: I often only like one or two posts on most pages and would pay the price of a newspaper to read them, but not pay $5/month for a rare hit among other content I don't particularly care for. But wait! There's a solution! TIPS. There are many people I would tip for an article or essay but it seems to be a new thing (and a pain to set up). Hopefully it will catch on and I'll be able to show monetary appreciation when I find something spectacular- and I think a lot of people share my perspective.