Build The Wall analysis

Build The Wall analysis

1)

Section 1 - establishes that news content needs to be paid for for the industry to remain as a whole.

Section 2 - it's discussed how publications need to move in tandem with adding paywalls behind their content to avoid harming themselves and also if demand for high-quality journalism still exists.

Section 3 -

Section 4 - discusses the different scenarios in which newspapers as of now can survive in seeing that they establish the 'wall.'

2)

As suggested by the title of the article, what David Simon puts across is that paywalls are 100% necessary for online publications in addition to newspaper ones. For the industry to even exist and for high-quality journalism to continue being part of our very culture and society, a subscription system needs to be established. Along with this, when publications choose to ‘build this wall’ all other companies will too need to do this unless they want to cause even greater harm to the industry as a whole. This is due to the fact that when a free publication offers the same thing as a paid one, people are inevitably going to choose to read the latter over the former. Simon also discusses how he doesn’t believe that unique features offered by particular newspapers can be enough to convince audiences to pay for it in a way alike to TV, and instead only a more niche audience could be garnered from this. 

3)

References to new and digital media that can be seen in this piece include talk about blogging, comment threads and just overall citizen journalism. Not only this but the 'information age', censorship and 'the volume of rubbish' that comes about with the internet (Andrew Keen) are also made mention of. Even though the article does make mention of the more negative aspects of the influence of new and digital media on the internet, it's shown that the positives are still valued more than them. In essence, we 'just have to put up with this.'

4)

In my opinion, newspapers deciding to put a paywall on online content will only further harm the industry. Particularly with the increased amount of young people using the online form of newspapers as a way to get news, them having a paywall on accessing this will more likely than not turn them away from using the form at all. Instead papers should attempt to rethink the news stories that they offer to readers, perhaps attempting to reach this younger demographic more directly with issues known to interest them. I know these things since I myself, wouldn't be willing to pay for news with a contributor to that being that I've never had to.