Four Fallacies That Broke the News
‘Information wants to be free,’ and other lies we told ourselves
As invitations for my five-year college reunion hit my inbox and countless pleas to pay into Northwestern University’s $7 billion slush fund blow up my cellphone, I’ve been waxing nostalgic about my time as a journalism student. I strolled in as a starry-eyed freshman in September 2010 with media morale arguably at its historical low point — just one year removed from the New York Times taking a $250 million loan from Carlos Slim Helú at the nadir of the financial crisis.
I remember the incoming freshman speech like it was yesterday. The message from the dean at the time, John Lavine, can be reduced to this: “You’ve made a noble decision to pursue the most righteous profession in existence — but you’re all fucked. If it’s long-term employment you’re after, the school of engineering is just a few hundred paces up the road.”
So there I was, 18 years old, taking on debt, and looking out on a horizon where nobody was getting a job. Popular sentiment suggested that the best-case scenario from moving behind a paywall would be that the New York Times would survive as an elitist journal for Manhattan socialites. At a school dedicated to teaching journalism, there was a crippling fear that no one would pay for online journalism. Against…
