Online subscriptions: the second digital divide

Originally published November 2019, when subscription paywalls were becoming widespread. Updated January 2026 after the predicted divide became reality.

Seven years later: The divide deepened

The 2019 warning proved accurate—and then some. By 2026, the subscription divide has become entrenched:

The information haves: Subscribe to multiple news sources (NYT, local papers, specialist publications), access quality analysis, fact-checked reporting and investigative journalism. They understand complex issues through expert coverage.

The information have-nots: Rely on free sources—social media, ad-supported clickbait and increasingly, misinformation and propaganda. Quality journalism sits behind paywalls they can't afford, especially when subscription fatigue means even middle-class readers pick only one or two news subscriptions.

The result: Knowledge gaps correlate with wealth. Those who can afford comprehensive news coverage make better-informed decisions about health, finance, politics and daily life. Those who can't are more vulnerable to manipulation.

This wasn't inevitable. Publishers who made different choices earlier might have prevented this bifurcation.

A new world order

Google and Facebook control almost all the world’s online advertising revenue. To get around this, news organisations and other online media use paywalls and subscriptions.

It makes perfect sense when there’s precious little advertising revenue to pay wages and other bills. Producing media costs money. Publishers learned that calling them subscriptions rather than paywalls helped, but the fundamental problem remained.

As Tom Foremski explains at ZDNet, this creates a new digital divide.

He writes: “The digital divide is about to get worse with the rise of subscription-based news media because of the failure of advertising to provide revenues for a sustainable business model.”

It’s another reason to not like Facebook. Another reason to fear Google.

Newspapers are not the only examples. Subscriptions, not advertising, pays for Video and sports streaming services. Pay-per-view is not new, but there is now more of it.

Here in New Zealand, the National Business Review hides all stories behind a paywall. The NZHerald keeps its best stories for paying subscribers. They are not alone.

A second digital divide

As an upshot, low income people who manage to jump the first digital divide and get online, come up against a second divide. Subscription costs often shut them out from the best online content.

By 2026, the economics became stark: A comprehensive news diet requires multiple subscriptions. Local news ($10-15 a month), national coverage ($15-20 a month), specialist reporting ($10-20 a month), international news ($15-25 a month). That's $50-80 monthly just for news—competing with Netflix, Spotify and essential software subscriptions.

Most households can't or won't spend that much on news alone. So they choose one subscription, or none. The language matters—calling them "subscriptions" rather than "paywalls" helped conversion—but it didn't solve the affordability problem.

Free media has stepped in to fill the gap left by newspapers. Some free sites are good. RNZ runs an excellent free news site.

Some free media is darker. People with a hidden agenda and money to spend can publish plausible looking news. Although plausibility isn’t essential here. Manipulators have free run to bombard readers with lies and misleading information.

Propaganda

Look up an international story on Google News. You’ll find links to certain sites that are openly or not so openly propaganda sites. There are Russian and Chinese examples. In some cases intelligence agencies pay the bills.

Other free news services might push extremist ideologies or misinformation. Lies are common. By 2026, AI-generated content made this worse—plausible-looking "news" sites pumping out convincing misinformation at scale, all free to access.

People who buy subscriptions end up better informed. They can make better choices. They may even live better, healthier, even happier lives than the poor souls on the wrong side of the second digital divide.

Meanwhile, local journalism collapsed in many areas. Communities without affordable local news sources became information deserts, filled by partisan blogs, social media rumours and national outlets that couldn't cover local issues adequately.

Democracy requires informed citizens

This creates a genuine crisis for democratic societies. Informed citizenship requires access to quality information. When that access depends on wealth, democracy suffers.

Some publishers recognized this. The Guardian built a voluntary contribution model—free to read, supported by those who can pay. Some local papers offered low-income subscription rates. Major investigations often appeared outside paywalls as a public service.

But these were exceptions. Most publishers, struggling to survive, had no choice but to maximize subscription revenue. The business model challenge that drove publications toward subscriptions created unintended social consequences.

The alternatives weren't better: Ad-supported models had failed, surveillance capitalism exploited readers, and direct government funding of journalism raised its own concerns. There were no easy answers.

More on journalism and media: 

This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, access to information and the subscription economy: 

• Lack of local technology news damages industry.
• Journalists too mean to tech companies.
• Why I'm a technology and business writer, not a geek.
• Old school journalism writing habits are powerful tools.
• IndieWeb offers independence to journalists.
• Does online media fill the gap left by newspapers.