If Disney+ dropped 46 ad trackers, three pop-ups and a banner that covered half the screen on the home page after I subscribed (which took three tries and a phone call) and signed me up for four newsletters without my confirmation, I'd refuse to pay "pennies a day" for that too. https://twitter.com/ClaraJeffery/status/1336176781670318083

Invest in UX, fire the Dollar Store Buckleys that populate your editorial pages, dump the syndicated content that for some reason is behind a paywall, and tell your reporters to quit being thin-skinned babies on Twitter dot com. Then I'll give you my Netflix $$$.

And by the by, I'll listen to this argument when bigfooting reporters stop parachuting into the Midwest to yoink, wholesale, indie-reported stories without a breath of credit for the local papers who broke them in the first place. Looking at you, every TV station on earth.

People will stop subscribing to the streaming services that suck. Just like they do to the papers that suck. This stuff isn't complicated and this kind of online scolding is tiresome in the extreme. Guilt doesn't motivate customer loyalty.

Newspapers had GENERATIONAL brand loyalty and trust and they pissed that away on purpose before the mobile internet was a thing. Firing delivery drivers, centralizing production, WHAT ARE MARKETINGS, the late 90s were a bloodbath. And all the while: WHY DON'T PEOPLE VALUE US?

Well, you first, assholes.

All I have to hawk here is an actual journalism venture that will change the whole world by raising a cohort of fantastic journalists every single year, and guess what, they're the Kids Today who are being told they don't value journalism: https://www.supportthecardinal.org/donate