Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to

I think this is really interesting to see in more detail, but not a surprise. The trend of Americans paying has been downward facing for a long time. It's not to say subscriptions isn't an important part of the revenue mix, but that it just can't be the only part. While we had a peak--that was strongly ideologically focused in 2016--it wasn't sustainable and it's hard to imagine it will come back.

Revenue has to come from more places than asking your fellow Americans to pay for it. Advertising is clearly a big piece of the puzzle, but there's a major gap in distribution. The model media has seen success in has been the news stand, pay for the front page or cover that catches your eye. The economics of that--because of the difficulties payment processors present--with micropayments doesn't seem to have played out well across the industry. But the space is contested by all sorts of apps and sites.

Events and local engagement seem to have seen some major success as hybrid ways to both distribute the news message and engage users.

But there are new places to distribute to and new ways: 404's paid RSS feeds; ATProto's Standard.Site schema and Feeds; The Verge's social-style feeds; etc...

People do seem willing to pay for news to meet them where they are, but what form that takes may be different for different news companies.

In 2026 I think the thing to take forward is that there is no one model. Every successful media company is fundamentally different. Sometimes they occupy a niche no one else could compete for. Sometimes there's room for maybe a few more (perhaps geo-limited). In any case, I'm not sure that media companies have as much to teach each other as they used to, or at least not as broadly. The New York Times, The Atlantic, Semafor, Bloomberg, The Philadelphia Inquirer, they're all "media companies" but while they might share some techniques or technical frameworks, they aren't actually in the same businesses anymore (along with many others). Be careful who you try to imitate out there.

The audience clearly doesn't understand what the media business is, or what shape it is in, or why they should pay for news. Don't make their mistakes. Try to teach them otherwise.

For a new report released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center surveyed 3,560 U.S. adults in December 2025 about their relationship to the news and how they perceive its value in everyday life. The study found “no consensus about the importance of following the news,” but there was one thing Americans seemed to agree on: they don’t pay for news.