—for Garry Hayes
A friend of mine wanted to read an article in the WSJ, but was blocked by paywalls. I know his frustration. He also doesn’t want to support that particular newspaper by getting a subscription. It is a bit too red as in conservative. And the opinion pieces are downright yellow. Yeah, about those paywalls, I find them maddening. I try and copy a salient paragraph if I have access to an article I’m posting. Otherwise I just pass by those headline only posts.
Another friend often posts paywall articles on Facebook which drives me crazy, talk about the big tease. No preamble, no synopsis—and you know how misleading those headlines are. And, lo, there was the WSJ article in question. So, I asked if someone could please post a salient paragraph or two for those of us left in the dark, outside the paywall.
All sorts of fresh hell broke loose. I was not prepared for the sanctimonious BS I got from my writer friend’s constituents—which was off the chart. They went for blood, they raged and railed, saying that what I was suggesting was theft, that we were ripping the paper off, ripping the writers off, that’s how the writers got paid, we were voiding copyright, etc.
It was like being stuck in one of the Hieronymus Bosch hell painting from The Garden of Earthly Delights. But this wasn’t Venice, no canals to drain the carnage and bloodshed. It was like an omen, an online version of The Lottery. I literally wanted to fold my poker hand four ways and put it where the moon don’t shine. At least hide the chips.
But the thread was growing exponentially by the minute, she has 4001+ friends. The end wasn’t in sight—other than my own rather exposed behind. So I did the next best thing, I deleted the thread. Poof! they were gone like a puzzled cloud of mosquitoes, left to satiate their bloodlust elsewhere. I blame the current gloves-off political milieu for all manner of bad manners.
Whatever happened to the lost art of writing a synopsis of an article, or using a salient paragraph—which is all that I originally asked for—not to repost the entire article. My motto: always take care of the reader. Posting a sentence or a paragraph with a news link is allowed, btw, no copyright laws are infringed, or being broken. It’s called fair use, or for educational purposes.
We’re not talking sacred text here. I wasn’t St. Columba attempting to bust copyright laws, thus starting a war over a psalter. To every cow its calf, and all that. And you know what that led to—banishment. I’ve been to Iona, it’s a lovely place. But not in winter.
Needless to say, I did not even bother to point out to the mosquito mob that I merely wanted a synopsis, or a salient paragraph. Not the entire bloody article. But the posters were well beyond the age of reason. I retreated, not wanting to pitch a forked battle on my friend’s wall, so I deleted all my comments from my friend’s post. Licked my word wounds in private. But the wound festered only to erupt here.
Never mind that the news journals are riddled with so many aggressive ads that it is impossible to see the article for the trees. SF Gate is impossible to actually read. Their ads often move or cover the text of the article, that it’s like playing hopscotch with words.
Was a time, not too long ago, when we were able to access WSJ, Wa Post, NY Times, etc., for free. Those news journals are getting plenty of ad revenue. And because of that, I am against paywalls in general.
Because I have dyslexia and cannot read articles surrounded by large blocks of red and yellow, or moving text/images/videos, let alone Google blanket banner ads draped atop text so you have to play dodgeball in order to finish a sentence, I also use AdBlocker, which also triggers a paywall response from most free journals as well, so I can’t win for losing.
There is a workaround, if you can’t access a cached article in Google, you can usually access articles using Reader View in Safari. Blessed soot of plain text on a field of silent snow. Until the website uses a lipsum fake text shield written in gibberish that either resembles Finnish, or Klingon to obscure their articles.
Personally, I do better with the Latin gibberish. And by then it’s Game on, as I try and outfox the dummy text walls. And when I do breach the webwalls, the article is usually a profound disappointment. Why did I even bother?
You’re probably wondering what lipsum is. And well you should. It’s a nickname, a made up word for a made up text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.” A 15th century gonzo typesetter took Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum and turned it into gibberish to use as fake text.
Or, another more stately paywall workaround, if you go to your local library webpage, they often have journal subscriptions and you can access articles that way. So genteel, I know.
But I’ve discovered that the newspapers behind those paywalls still want us to pony up to read their articles, and do nothing to tame those obnoxious ads flashing and screaming and yowling. How is this aggravated assault on the senses even remotely fair? I give up.
Sometimes it is too difficult getting the news when it’s a matter of yellow journalism masquerading behind a paywall.
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