This isn't to put any individual on blast—I'm aware that by writing this, you can just look at the notes and see what inspired this, but it's not remotely the first time we've gotten comments like this, and I'm really not trying to pin it one commenter—but it's a bit demoralizing to post our articles and be met with a "boo paywall" response.
One thing I've learned since launching a subscriber-driven publication is a lot of folks outside the media are totally unaware of the current economics of the industry. The era of ad-supported pubs is long gone; this post from TPM founder Josh Marshall a few years ago shows the dramatic drop over the past decade, and this is a huge established pub.
Many of the things you read for free online are subsidized by something else: with big pubs, it's not ads or subscribers, but often stuff like games, events festivals, or paid ~insights for specific industries; if a publication seems to have zero paywall/subscriber options, look into which ultra-wealthy person or corporation is funding it. With Substack, you're reading for free via Silicon Valley VC money (and subscriber revenue that comes via the horrible high-profile people they platform). On video platforms like YT, TikTok, and Instagram, folks can share their content for free because [insert a massive data-collection, audience-is-the-product spiel that I'm sure I don't need to spell out at this point].
Fansplaining the podcast had a Patreon, which gave Flourish and I a bit of compensation for our labor, but it was very much a side project. Fansplaining the indie pub, on the other hand, has writers: professional journalists that need to be paid for their writing. We began with a fairly loose paywall, but when most people were able to read most of our stuff for free, the initial wave of subscriptions died pretty quickly. That meant we plateaued at enough money to pay writers (modestly) each month, and nothing more; I have been working for free for months, and my editors have been working for a very small amount of money.
With a piece like this, the writer spends hours writing, multiple editors spend hours editing, and then we put it online and ask for...$1. That's how much we sell article access it in a one-off capacity. 4,500 words, including an audio version?? A good deal imo! It's $7 a month to read our multiple articles published a week (and half that if you get in touch for the affordable-tier discount). I know $1 isn't nothing; a lot of folks literally can't afford it. And I certainly don't begrudge anyone who doesn't want to pay it. I hit hard paywalls all the time and close the tab. There are only so many subscriptions one person can spring for.
But every day I see folks complaining about media paywalls on Tumblr in particular and I just wonder how many people are aware, at least for indie pubs like ours, that there is basically no other funding model we can implement internally. We make it clear on the site that we are open to outside investors; if the right partner wanted to underwrite this project, we'd more than welcome it, and we'd be able to offer way more stuff for free because there'd be another way to pay contributors, our various hosting/software tool bills, and—ideally!!—ourselves as editors. But right now, we are operating at a major loss.
Again, I really don't mean to pin this frustration on individuals—and to reiterate, these complaints are widespread, to put it mildly—but I just wanted to offer a little transparency about what publications like ours are struggling with. We are so, so grateful to our subscribers, and to everyone purchasing our articles in a one-off capacity, too. I really hope we can keep Fansplaining going in the long-term; I'm trying to think of this as an investment period. But hopefully letting folks know exactly why we lock our articles gives a little insight into how all of this works.
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