Just when I think I am immune to being shocked by anything
anyone can say, it happens.
It happened with the Access Hollywood tape – or more
precisely, when you-know-who won the nomination. It happened with disparaging a
Gold Star family.
But, it’s more egregious when someone I know well and
consider a friend says something totally shocking.
I really believe now the nadir has been reached.
A friend told me she resents paying for news. She refuses to
read anything online that is behind a paywall.
To my credit, I neither decked her nor puked. Although both
were a strong possibility.
I mean, she pays for food, electricity, gas for her car,
private school tuition for her son. But she resents being asked to pay for
news.
News has always cost money. And it should. It must. Sure, in
the days when print was king, our subscriptions paid basically to get it to our
front door. Or into the rose bushes or on the roof.
Advertising paid the big
bills.
Then Craig’s list came along, defenestrating the classified
section, the lifeblood of many papers.
Now, with much of news digitized, advertising became much
more difficult to sell. Which makes sense. Selling a print ad in a legacy
newspaper means selling SOMETHING. Something that can be touched, clipped in
the case of a coupon.
Selling an ad on line is like selling vapor.
This means that even though many outlets are not paying for
printing a product, the costs incurred I producing the news needs to be paid
for by someone. The reader.
National news anchors notwithstanding, most journalists are
pathetically underpaid. But they deserve to be paid. So do the coders, the
photographers, the graphic artists, all the people who make the news available.
In these times when posers pretend to be journalists on the
internet, writing nonsense and outright lies, professional journalists are more
important than ever. The reader is obligated to look for primary sources, to
check any unfamiliar site name, to run Snopes checks on anything that doesn’t
ring true.
And the reader is obligated to pay for content.
The reader does not have the luxury of resenting the pay
wall.
Whether it’s handing tuppence to a newsie in 19th
Century London or charging the New York Times to your PayPal account in 21st
Century New York, you have an obligation to pay.
An obligation to yourself because it’s the only way to be
assured you are getting the facts. An obligation to your children to assure
they will not be deluged with lies. An obligation to those of us who spend our
lives churning out the news. And an obligation to the memories of Daniel Pearl
and James Foley and all the other journalists who died bringing you the news.
Who died for you.
Don’t dishonor their sacrifice by complaining about the cost.
--30--
