The Effect of Piracy on the Tech Media Ecosystem

There are as many highly paid people working in tech as in finance, but they do not support any equivalent to the FT or Bloomberg, any publication with the same resources and reach.

The FT and Bloomberg rely on “open” paywalls to fund themselves, paywalls that let you read a few free articles per month. These paywalls ensure both resources — because people have to subscribe to read more — and reach — because people can read a few articles before subscribing, so that articles published by these outlets can go viral, everyone can read them and discuss them.

But they’re easy to bypass with certain browsers extensions and web services, which most people in tech use. That only allows for two kinds of tech media:

• Free outlets that have reach, but not the resources to do serious journalism.

• Paywalled outlets like The Information that have the resources to do serious journalism, but no reach, because their paywalls don’t allow any free articles, otherwise everyone in tech would bypass it.

Why not have some articles always free and others always paywalled? Ars Technica does this, but the problem with it becomes apparent when you ask yourself which articles to paywall and which articles to make available for free. If the best articles are paywalled, they can’t go viral, if they’re free, why would anyone pay? The reach/resources dilemma exists for every article, just as it exists for every publication.