I Hate Newspaper Paywalls
But good journalism costs money
The only newspapers I have subscriptions to are the Baltimore Sun and the Wall Street Journal. I can only really afford to be shelling out money to one newspaper, and that is the Baltimore Sun. Local news is more important to me than national these days, and I like to be as informed about what’s going on around me than about what’s going on across the country.
As for the Wall Street Journal, I guess it’s an alright newspaper to read. But I don’t pay for it (not directly). It’s a supplementary perk to me as a Johns Hopkins University graduate student. I joke frequently with my friends that now, I’m an archconservative who thumbs my nose at poor people. It’s obviously not true, but I never understood why every article, even those unrelated to stocks, needed to have stock prices headlined on every article. It’s a little nitpicky on my end, but I find it personally off-putting. If I’m reading an op-ed about Amazon unionization, why do I care about the price of the Dow Jones?
I wish the perks of my Master’s Program gave me access to another newspaper. I have the utmost respect for the Wall Street Journal but I don’t follow their columnists like I do Nicholas Kristof, David Brooks, Charles Blow or Maureen Dowd at the New York Times. The stock price issue is very minor in comparison to the fact that…
