Online pay walls on the websites of publications like The Mercury News discourage young readers and keep them from learning to value online journalism.
The Mercury News only allows visitors on their website to read three articles before paying 99 cents for a three month trial, which will later increase to almost $10 a month.
Many young adults already pay for several subscription services and do not want to add another monthly payment after signing up for streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Spotify.
This hesitance might not be a large problem if modern readers knew the value of journalism, but the three article limit on websites like The Mercury News keeps readers from becoming familiar enough with the content’s value.
If a reader sees an article shared through a social media platform like Twitter with only a vague clickbait headline, that reader will most likely decide not to read the article if they run into the website’s pay wall.
Without providing at least a few short paragraphs of information from the story, readers cannot know if the article is worth paying for a monthly subscription.
As a journalism student at San Jose State University and a staff writer for The Spartan Daily, it broke my heart to not know why I should subscribe whenever I used up my free three articles on The Mercury News website.
The only reason I finally signed up was because I needed to use articles from The Mercury News as sources for stories I wrote for The Spartan Daily.
Publications need to allow online readers to see more articles on their websites for free or provide more introductory information through social media.
Otherwise, online pay walls will become just another reason for journalism to die.
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