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Media scholars have long lamented advertising’s negative effects on the press, from depoliticizing and sensationalizing the news to narrowing the range of voices and viewpoints. Today, advertising’s unchallenged reign – including its sometimes positive role in helping fund quality news – seems to be coming to an end. The current hope is that readers will come to the rescue. But which readers? And what are the democratic costs as well as benefits of urging audiences to pay for the news? Before we break out the champagne and celebrate a new journalistic golden age of financial stability and civic success, these questions deserve a clear-eyed examination. Less than a decade ago, American newspapers received on average 80 percent of their revenues from advertising. Since then, many newspapers have moved closer to a 50–50 advertising–audience proposition, and the New York Times now earns more than 60 percent of its revenues from subscriptions. The Washington Post is likewise rapidly increasing its online subscription revenues and the Wall Street Journal has long had a strong paywall around its online content. Magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic also have paywalls, along with some regional newspapers; similar trends are occurring in Western Europe, where readers have historically borne a greater share of media funding (Sehl et al., 2017). The upside of the subscription model is that readers are only going to pay money for something they really want or need. This provides a strong incentive for news organizations to produce the highest quality journalism. In France, Mediapart has adopted a pure subscription model – entirely paying for its profitable operations with around 130,000 subscribers paying 11 euros per month – and used these revenues to produce independent investigative reporting that has been critical of governments both right and left. The downside, though, is that subscriber-funded news caters to relatively highincome, high-education elites. Even if subscriptions contribute to higher quality news, if

Paywalls and public knowledge: How can journalism provide quality news for everyone?