May 7 (TheLedger) - Every time a Sri Lankan publication moves a column behind a paywall, the same chorus of objections returns: it's anti-democratic, it's elitist, it puts information out of reach.
Each is wrong, and the experience of the last fifteen years should have settled the argument. Reader-paid newsrooms work for readers. Advertising-paid newsrooms work for advertisers. The clickbait deluge of the 2010s was the predictable consequence of treating attention as the only currency that matters.