A Farewell to Free Journalism
Free journalism was a gift — one that journalists can no longer afford to keep giving to readers
By Megan McArdle
Bloomberg, my former employer, is reportedly moving to a paywall. If that turns out to be true, I can’t say I’ll be surprised.
When I announced that I was leaving Bloomberg View for The Washington Post’s opinion section in February, many longtime readers gently reproached me for moving my writing behind a subscriber paywall. Some of them were not so gentle. How could I cut myself off from readers like that? Was I really so arrogant as to think they ought to pay for the privilege of reading me?
I couldn’t blame them for being miffed; some of them, after all, had been reading me since I was a young(ish) blogger writing from Ground Zero. The open Internet literally gave me my career, and for years, I’ve repaid that gift by seeking out employers that kept my writing free to readers. I really believed in the motto that “information wants to be free.”
But by the time The Post approached me, I’d already concluded that the battle for the open Internet was lost. Sooner or later, virtually everyone in the industry is going to put his or her content behind a subscription wall. And in general, you…
