Free Press

Scrolling recently, I came upon a post featuring an article from a local newspaper and subsequently glanced at the comments. (I know. I recognize that’s where I went wrong straight away.) Anyway, one comment, in particular, caught my eye. It said something to the effect of:

“Can someone summarize this for me? I’m not going to pay to read it!”

“Me either,” someone else replied. Another person agreed, and then another.

It was like watching the Internet equivalent of angry, torch-wielding villagers spilling onto the town square, incensed at being faced, once again, with the cruel, gluttonous monster commonly known as the paywall.

Scrolling further, I ran across articles about recent layoffs at local news stations across the country. The same villagers were now pointing their torches in a different direction, all while wringing their hands about corporate greed, shrinking news organizations that never seem to sufficiently serve their particular local communities, and the woeful lack of seasoned journalists.

“They all look like children!”

In the interest of fairness, there were also comments from people who think all news is fake and all news people are useless and corrupt. Since I suspect they could never bring themselves to drop $1.25 on this local paper, I’ll leave them to the Facebook void.

Look. I get it. Paywalls can be annoying, and money is tight, and corporations are greedy. There is truth in all those things. You know what else is true? Subscriptions to local newspapers are relatively cheap. Spend a few dollars, and you can usually get online access for a few months, at least, maybe even an actual newspaper. In the end, it costs far less than you’d pay for a latte.

I understand it may not always seem worth the hassle, but if you zoom out, there are greater issues at play.

Our town is unusual in that it has a paper that’s been going since 1877. Importantly, it’s still here, in part, because there is a readership that cares enough to support it, but there are also people willing and able to keep it going for practically nothing. It is largely a labor of love, which is wonderful, but it is not reasonable to expect every outlet to operate in this way.

Journalism is valuable. A free press is vital.

Something I’ve noticed: the “freedom isn’t free” people get real quiet when the people upholding the freedom are out of uniform. Freedom of the press requires trained professionals to do the work, to know how to ask the questions, to hold the powerful to account, to be fair, to be honest, to act with integrity. Journalism operates on the front lines of freedom of speech, not existing in a vacuum, but as part of the same mechanisms working to uphold and protect what our country says it stands for. The comments I read recently struck me as a sad commentary on what we seem to value, what we’re willing to do to preserve those things, and how, too often, we don’t truly appreciate anything until it is gone.

This essay originally appeared in my column in the August 20, 2026 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY.