Upholding the right not to pay for something twice
Today – and in doing so possibly in a cool ‘post-modern’ manner raising profound issues over the media edifice of artifice that dominates how we view art, marketing and fashion – I am revealing to Rusters how most days I educate myself about what is going on in the world.
It’s not exactly rocket science.
I simply trawl the British national newspaper websites, or rather the ever-decreasing number of them that will allow me do this without paying a subscription for the right to read the content they publish: (I have an aversion -and indeed an objection in principle – to the notion that I should have to pay to read a report or piece online that, when the high street shops in my locality open, I will (or might, or do) buy in newspaper form anyway). Why should I have to pay twice to read one little article?
The Times, being part of the Murdoch empire, had long adopted the online subscription approach (one wouldn’t expect any different). But over the years the likes of The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian have also gradually followed suit.
I’m not stupid – I can understand why.
A sizable and possibly growing proportion of the word get their news online. If that means newspapers need to follow the action – and cash – so be it, the theory being that if more and more people obtain their news online there, as night follows day, that probably means they’re most likely not also buying the corresponding physical newspaper.
Interestingly, in the recent past The Guardian, which has been gradually building a pay-wall (by progressively reducing the number of its articles that a punter can access online without taking out a subscription), has begun explaining its policy … by denying it.
See here:
“Register for free and
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Register for free I’ll do it later
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As the legendary actor known as Michael Cane used to say (or is it that he didn’t, yet some affectionate impressionists and others made careers of pretending that he did to the point where he might as well have had?):
“Not many people know that”.