The Inner Monologue

Let’s play a game called Would You Rather:

• Option A: Pay a few bucks a month for actual journalism—you know, the kind where reporters occasionally leave their apartments, verify facts, and don’t just repost tweets as “breaking news.”
• Option B: Live in a dystopian hellscape where your only “news” comes from AI-generated listicles, TikTok conspiracy theorists, and that one uncle who insists the moon landing was faked (but also that we never went to the moon at all?).

Because here’s the cold, hard truth: Journalism is circling the drain, and if we don’t start paying for it, the only “news” left will be written by bots, propagandists, and Elon Musk’s meme dealers.

“But News Should Be Free!” – Said the Person Who Pays $15 for a Frappuccino

Ah yes, the battle cry of the modern internet user: “Information wants to be free!” (Unless it’s their Netflix password. Then it’s “STOP MOOCHING, GREG.”)

News isn’t free to produce. Reporters need salaries. Investigative journalism takes time. Fact-checking is a thing (or at least, it used to be). But instead of paying for quality, we’ve collectively decided that ads and clickbait should fund everything—which is how we ended up with “You Won’t Believe What This Celebrity Ate for Breakfast (Spoiler: It’s Avocado Toast).”

The Free News Model is a Pyramid Scheme

Right now, the only “news” outlets thriving are:

1. Hyperpartisan rage farms (because nothing sells like outrage).
2. AI slop factories (congrats, your “article” was written by a bot trained on Reddit comments).
3. Rich weirdos’ vanity projects (looking at you, Citizen Kane wannabes).

Meanwhile, local newspapers are dying, actual reporters are being laid off, and the only people left “covering” city council meetings are freelance YouTubers who think 5G causes brain worms.

So Here’s the Deal

If you want news that isn’t:

• Written by an algorithm trained on 4Chan
• Funded by shadowy billionaires with an agenda
• Literally just made up

Then you’re gonna have to pay for it. Subscribe to a damn newspaper. Support independent journalists. Stop expecting hard-hitting journalism to survive on exposure bucks and Facebook shares.

Otherwise, enjoy your future where “news” is just an endless stream of AI-generated nonsense, and the closest thing to investigative reporting is a livestream of a guy in a tin foil hat yelling about chemtrails.

Your choice.

(This post was written by a human. Probably. For now.)