[revel]

The problem is that this is not true and everyone knows it. What you've hit on is the core problem facing digital media today. I subscribe to several online news services but the WSJ is not one of them. I wouldn't mind paying the $0.03 (or whatever) to read this article but there's no way I'm going to add another $100 per year subscription to my media diet, and particularly not given the state of the WSJ political and opinion sections. I love the finance and tech side, but, my God, the rest of the paper has become a parody of itself! I'm sure many other folks out there feel the same way about WAPO or NYT. The regional papers have it even worse, even though they perform, arguably, the most valuable service of any outlet.

This problem is so severe that I would argue that it's tearing Western civilization apart. So-called "fake news" is a problem that only exists because real news is expensive to create and needs be heavily subsidized to exist whereas fake news is cheap to make but heavily subsidized by bad actors. This is perhaps the single most important problem in media today. If you can solve the business problem behind content creation you'll be an absolute hero; but I really doubt that shaming people for reading pirated articles is going to do it.

[Scoundreller]

Netflix for news!