Opinion: Read all about it - just not for free, says author Nicola Miller

Being a consumer is extremely frustrating these days. Websites and shop windows are filled with things I’d like to own whilst cafe menus and takeaway sites tempt me with lists of delicious meals I’d like to eat. It’s a terrible shock to be told one must pay for these things, particularly when they are displayed so enticingly. It’s really not fair.

I sound like an entitled lunatic, don’t I? Yet people who don’t think they should have to pay to read their local newspaper online are effectively saying the same thing. “Shouldn't that be Bury Paywall Press?” says one wag underneath an FB link to one story, whilst others post variations on a ‘“why isn’t this free to read?” theme or accuse the paper of lifting stories from ‘Doreen’s page’. (I’d love to see where Doreen studied media law and how she manages shorthand-wise when reporting from court.) The criticisms (and insults) come thick and fast when the story is deemed public information and ‘should’, therefore, be free to read for everyone.

Post a story about yet another multiple car crash, or the prosecution of a sex offender (two examples I have noticed of late) and online commentators become particularly irate they have to pay or subscribe to read. It is as if the home page of an online news site is taunting them with things they cannot have - or are willing to pay for.

In 2016 I wrote about local journalism and its democratic value. It was clear that print media was in crisis. Readers no longer bought newspapers, preferring to seek free online content. Compounding the problem was the relative slowness of traditional print media to adapt to digital journalism and, when they finally launched online sites, their reluctance to continue a print-style transactional relationship with their readership. ‘This is still news and you still need to pay for it’ got lost in the belief that digital advertising would sustain an online newspaper. And now we’re in 2025 and news sites continue to try to make advertising, paywalls, subscriber deals, and pay-per-read financially viable while their readers rebel and refuse to accept that newspaper sites will be liberally peppered with ads if they are unwilling to pay for their news.

Online journalism cannot win.

I wrote about how the business model of providing free digital content has bred disrespect, entitlement and apathy in consumers; in 2025 it’s far worse than I imagined as regional newspapers fold to be replaced by conspiracy sites, ‘citizen journalism’ (which has about as much in common with journalism as an anteater) and social media sites filled with the kind of units who believe the earth is flat yet refer to ‘going around the world’ on a cruise. (Yes, I sh*t you not.)

Back in 2016 Barry Peters, the group editor for Iliffe Media, told me: “With a local newspaper, you get people writing about communities in which they live, work and play and they understand the nuances of local politics and their county’s idiosyncrasies.”

The entrepreneur Warren Buffett says similarly: “Nobody ever stopped reading when halfway through a story that was about themselves or their neighbours and the future of local newspapers is dependent upon their remaining the primary source of information about the local stories which are of greatest importance to readers.”

I wrote how fewer resources to pay for investigative journalism and stories about local government decision-making coupled with the unreasonable public expectations about what journalism should cost means we’ll end up with billionaire-controlled national papers and great swathes of opinion-led sites masquerading as reporting.

Looking at the state of things in 2025, it’s even worse than I imagined.