It may be difficult to believe, but at one time browsing the web was an easy experience. You could leap from website to website in a heartbeat. Now you go to a site just to read a quick fact and you have to click through cookiesA piece of data stored within a web browser that websites can retrieve at a later time. They can tell people how often users return to a particular site. , promotions and of course - the dreaded paywallA means of restricting the content of a website, so that people have to pay to access it. .

For something now so ubiquitous, the paywall is a surprisingly recent invention. The first ever paywall was set up by the Wall Street Journal in 1996, but they did not become mainstream until the Times adopted one in 2010.

The immediate effect was that its online readership dropped by 90%. Most other newspapers thought that showed it was just a fad. But it turned out it needed only 15,000 subscribers to bring in £1.4 million a year.¹

Today, 33% of UK newspapers have followed its example. Elsewhere the paywall is much more dominant: 69% of US and EU newspapers have one.²

The rationale is obvious: news is in a financial spiral. The whole industry is strapped for cash, and paywalls are a way of making their work pay.

But some fear it comes at a heavier price than £2 a week for full access. It might be dragging down democracy itself.

Just 9% of people in the UK are willing to pay for their news.³ That means when newspapers break important stories, the vast majority of people will not be able to read them.

And those who do subscribe to one newspaper probably will not pay to read others, so they risk getting trapped in an echo chamberAn environment in which somebody only hears views that reflect and reinforce their own. They are never challenged with opposing views. .

Moreover, while people might be persuaded to fork out for national and international news, almost no-one wants to pay for local news. That means local newspapers are dying out, unable to compete. More than 320 shut down between 2009 and 2019.⁴

But local newspapers are the only news outlets that hold local government to account, so without them our democracy is much weaker.

But others say paywalls are the only way of guaranteeing news quality. Without them, news websites are reliant on advertisers, who pay for each time someone sees their adverts. So the sites need to attract as many people to the site as possible to raise revenue.

This often means running with clickbait headlines that misinform the reader, or engaging in search engine optimisation (SEO) to make their content come up higher on Google even if it means misrepresenting the story.

And then there is the question of independence. If newspapers are reliant on other companies paying them for adverts, they might be incentivised to portray those companies in a better light in their news coverage - or to avoid stories that make them look bad.

A few years ago, Peter Oborne, chief political commentator of the Telegraph, resigned from the newspaper, alleging that it had suppressed negative stories about important advertisers, especially banking giant HSBCA bank which operates in many countries around the world. Banks provide financial services to customers such as accounts and loans..⁵

Paywalls, they argue, are just part of a wider media ecosystem. They allow newspapers to fund original reporting and break big stories that the BBC and other broadcasters can then cover, bringing them to those who are not willing to pay for the original.

Is democracy dying behind paywalls?

Yes: A healthy democracy relies on an informed citizenry. If people cannot access news because the cost is too steep, then it will be much more difficult to hold government to account.

No: Paywalls are not the end of the world. Most sites are still free, and there are always the broadcasters and their news apps. Democracy will not benefit if all our papers run out of money.

Or... We are in a chicken-and-egg situation. Many people are unwilling to pay for news because they do not trust the newspapers. But then the newspapers lower the quality of their content to make more money.