To me it seems like the 2000s and 2010s when all those companies got massive and laid off middle management. Then those short sighted assholes got jobs elsewhere and poisoned those ponds.
Don't bring logic here, this is reddit! Wait. Oh no. Seriously though, not all sites with pay walls are applying the pay wall to every article. Some charge for opinions and business gossip while leaving true news that affects everyone open
It sucks because journalists do need to make money to continue reporting. Spamming sites with ads is bad for the reader's experience too. Not totally sure what the solution is.
It's kind of ridiculous how quickly actual access to news and an informed world view, which WAS supposed to be one of the Internet's great advantages, has become a dream unless you pony up to the whimsies of every fucking publication board craving fat profits.
Yeah, plus it's not even like having to buy newspapers in the pre-internet days, it's all recurring subscriptions that are a pain to cancel. Truly a great shame.
I always put the URL into the Wayback Machine on archive.org in these situations. 9 times out of 10 there's an archived version of the article with no paywall.
I literally don't read any articles that force me to register. I feel like I'm going to become rather ignorant because of it, but I don't want to participate in their schemes either.
I still use Google news to follow some topics and it gathers articles from my local news sites, too. But any time if shows an article that prompts me to register to see it, I just go back to the Google news page and tell it to block that source.