Paywalls

For

Q. What does David Simon mean by ‘slow suicide’?

• By 'Slow Suicide' he means that the news industry is going to end up destroying themselves. 

Q Why does he mean by saying anti-paywall people “don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism”?

• He means they dont understand that people need to make money and with newspapers and journalism, as a whole, on the decline; people who condemn paywalls are essentially condemning the entire news industry.

Q What does he mean by “journalism is a profession”?

• He is saying that journalism is a real job, and therefore it requires wages and actual money; people's lives depend on this just as much as any other job.

Q. What do you think made 1 million people pay for the NYT(New York Times)?

• They must have payed for the political view as well as the price or perhaps it is the ease of access.

Against

Q What does he mean by “Band-Aid to cover a bullet hole”?

• They are trying to say that they are covering the problem in-adequately which just makes the problem more noticeable. It could also be trying to say that there solution is only temporary and eventually will, like a bandaid, fall off with minimal effort and protection.

Q How much would you pay for Facebook (or any other social network)? Why this 

much?

• I would pay a minimal amount for facebook, if i had an intention of using it, but would expect some sort of reward or new features to be added frequently.

Q. What would make you pay to read a newspaper? (Value-added content)

• I would pay the same amount as the average right now. The only realistic reason i would pay for a newspaper, even though i can receive it in almost every aspect of my life, is if they have the same political views as me which would allow me to receive some form of validation.

Finally: In your own words put together a 200 – 300 word argument IN FAVOUR of Paywalls – to try to convince a young person who has never paid for a newspaper.