Right now, folks need and are seeking out trustworthy news about the pandemic. Right now, lots of folks are irritated that paywalls exist. Newsgathering is expensive, especially in a crisis. And as often happens in a crisis, lots of news organisations have dropped their paywalls.
And many, many local and not-for-profit news organisations (like the @TexasTribune) don’t have paywalls at all. But to keep doing the important work of providing that news, news orgs need your subscriptions, donations, and advertising revenue.
To provide reliable information for free to you, news orgs rely on (ever shrinking, in most places) teams of reporters and editors and photographers and graphic designers and engineers and sales people and development managers and on and on. Those people need to be paid.
So sure, you might find it frustrating to run into a paywall. And you might not need or want or be able to subscribe to or donate to every news org asking for your support. But can you do it for even one of them, at whatever level you can afford? And can you do it today?
Maybe you think big, profitable news organisations “don’t need or deserve your $”. Ok. There’s many other options. There’s your local public radio station which is probably doing a donation drive right now. There’s specialist news orgs like @themarkup (themarkup.org/donations/)
There’s non-partisan local media (like the @TexasTribune, to which I am biased) and amazing community-centred outfits like @SahanJournal. There’s independent producers doing tremendous work supported by their Patreons and Kickstarter campaigns. There’s options. Please find yours.
Bonus fact! Your donations to non-profit newsrooms to become members / supporters are a) tax deductible b) probably eligible for Benevity / gift matching if your employer offers that.
