Thread by @davidzmorris

So, here's a new thing I have out today. I think the content is extremely interesting.

And if you click on it, you'll notice something else interesting.

1/12

fortune.com/2020/03/04/tes…

That's right - Fortune now has a paywall. A pretty tough one to get through! You might not like that.

But let me take you on a journey to explain why it's not just good for Fortune (hopefully), and for me , but for you, too.

2/12

theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

Newspapers and magazines first started going on the internet in the 1990s. It was an experiment - very few people were online then. So it made sense to just keep things free and learn from the experiment.

3/12

Then came the promise of ads. For a while, they worked!

They worked so well, in fact, that search engines and social media ate the world by placing ads around online content without actually having to pay the high cost of creating it.

Genius!

4/12

fortune.com/2017/04/26/goo…

But it's becoming clear that, compared to paper, online display ads just aren't as effective. So even with the same or larger audience, it gets harder and harder to make money from them.

It's also becoming clear that free, ad-driven information tends towards garbage.

5/12

Newspapers are also losing audiences en masse, and that's tremendously concerning. I wish I had a magic solution for keeping local news sustainable.

6/12

journalism.org/fact-sheet/new…

But for national publications, the answer is becoming clear. Having a subscription paywall will allow us to produce more content, and focus on MAKING SURE IT'S HIGH-QUALITY INSTEAD OF CHASING CLICKS.

7/12

So if you're dissatisfied with the low quality of the news media, here's your answer: Pay us.

Now, if you'd rather not, that's fine too. There will almost certainly continue to be free news websites. Some of those will do real reporting. But a lot will read what reporters like me write, then produce summaries. This is known as "aggregation."

9/12

The paywall will allow us to produce MORE original reporting for the aggregators to copy.

And there will be parts of what we do that remain free, including breaking news analysis.

So you'll have access to a lot of the same information - maybe even more of it.

10/12

But if you want the full nuance of a deep dive that took weeks or months to report: Pay us.

If you want top-notch writing in its undiluted form: Pay us.

If you want commentary from the absolute biggest names in your field: Pay us.

If you want to learn how to be a winner, and stay one: Pay us.

And that's just about it, chief.

cc @mdudas @fintechfrank @NeerajKA @decryptmedia @btschiller @jeffjohnroberts @TheStalwart