“Democracy dies in darkness.”

That’s the slogan of the Washington Post, a newspaper with a relatively high reliability score of 38.69 out of 64.

So why does a $12-a-month paywall shroud their site in shadows?

The dangers of paywalled news sites go beyond just corporate greed — they create a two-tiered system where credible news is limited only to those who are willing to spend the money. The 17% of Americans who pay for their news have become a form of elite in terms of access to information, while the other 83% are forced to turn to untrustworthy misinformation or no news at all.

The earliest known example of a paywalled news site is the San Jose Mercury News, who charged $5 a month for access upon their launch 29 years ago in 1994. What started as a way to gain a little extra revenue has become the global trend for Western newspapers, with 69% of news sites in the European Union and the U.S. being paywalled today. When I think about the increased restrictions on news, I can’t help but be outraged — and justifiably so.

According to the International News Media Association, the paid online news market is now larger than the U.S. online news advertising market. Even CNN, the second-most-visited news website in the U.S., began to use a paywall in October of 2024.

That’s a lot of paywalls. Too many, in fact. It seems like everywhere you turn, you’re blocked — not because the information is classified, but because, at the end of the day, companies want money. They don’t get enough from newspapers anymore — they know many people turn to the most convenient source just a few clicks away.

In 2018, the average price for a U.S. online newspaper was $8.52 a month. Since then, it’s nearly doubled, with a study from Oxford University finding that the median cost of U.S. digital news in 2024 was $16 a month. That’s almost $200 a year spent on access to only one news site.

That’s egregious. Personally, I’d rather spend my $200 on a Ninja CREAMi MAX, a nine-in-one ice cream and frozen treat maker for ice cream, sorbet, milkshakes, frozen yogurt and more — including an XL capacity, silver color and two family-sized 24 ounce tubs.

With the cost of necessities only growing with inflation, most people don’t see news as something important enough to spend on. Basic living expenses like food or rent are prioritized — and rightfully so.

In 2024, 36.4% of American households reported that they were financially insecure, meaning they had difficulty affording household necessities. If families are struggling to even put food on the table, how can we expect them to pay tens of dollars month after month for news?

We can’t.

Paywalls aren’t even that effective. According to a study done by Georgia Tech and Notre Dame, only 0.21% of paywalls resulted in subscriptions, and 57% of the time, readers simply gave up and left the website. As we see an increasingly lower attention span in Gen Z, a steadily rising number of readers no longer want to put in the effort to find free alternative news sources.

When readers don’t turn to alternative sources, they turn to social media — the place where anyone can post pretty much anything.

According to a recent poll of 84 students conducted on the Three Penny Press’ Instagram, 84.5% of students said that social media was their main source of news. Even 21% of U.S. adults regularly get news from influencers on social media. More and more people, particularly in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, no longer get their information from news sites like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. They get their news from the easiest and most convenient place, which for them, is gradually becoming social media influencers.

But the 18% of Americans who use social media as their primary news source hear more false stories and are significantly less educated on politics and current events. With the rise of social media, this number grows exponentially, worsening misinformation among Americans.

The 2025 World Economic Forum Global Risks Report identified misinformation and disinformation as the most dangerous risks for the next two years. Facebook and TikTok are one of the leading platforms in terms of misinformation — and others are quickly catching up.

It’s no surprise that misinformation and fake news spreads like wildfire on social media. Without users fact-checking their news, audiences will trust and share nearly anything — people now equally trust news from social media just as much as national news.

People who depend on social media for their main source of political news have lower political knowledge compared to people who rely on other sources for their news.

The result of intaking and listening to false information? Poor decision-making.

Specifically, uninformed Americans with a low socioeconomic status cannot translate their preferences into actual choices. Paywalls only exacerbate this problem, as those who can’t afford to pay for news won’t have access to the information that allows them to make real choices. Sometimes, being uninformed makes people not vote all together. As elections are coming up and early voting begins, being uninformed about certain bills and candidates can lead to voters making choices they wouldn’t normally make if they knew the whole picture.

People are only guessing at what’s going on in their own government. Political ignorance is becoming the new trend — and it’s a dangerous one.

America is a democracy built off of the people. But how can we, the people, be a part of this democracy if we’ve been left in the dark?

Political knowledge is an essential part of democracy. How can we criticize our government if we don’t even know what to criticize? How can we determine which policies will benefit our country if we don’t even understand what the policies will do? Accountability is difficult if voters don’t even know which part of the government is at fault. If we don’t keep the government accountable, it’ll be easy for its power to spiral out of control, and that doesn’t just affect the individual voter — it affects the entire country.

This growing wave of paywalled news will only continue to lead thousands or even millions of readers left in the dark, or worse, misled and misinformed.

People should have the right to know — the right to know what’s going on without paying, the right to make their own informed decisions.

The next time you see that “Enjoy unlimited access for $6.25 a week” pop up, know that it’s not just an inconvenience — it’s a barrier.

Because democracy doesn’t just die in darkness.

It dies behind paywalls.