For Noam Bardin, former Waze CEO, who subscribes to 8 online subscriptions, he was beginning to feel the decline of quality news sources versus the rise of free and fake news. So he decided to take his tech background, join forces with long-time journalist Dan Rather, and create an “experiment to save journalism.”
Paygo Media is a platform to offer an alternative option to paywalled resources, or what is typically more high-quality journalism. Its premise is that instead of needing to subscribe to specific media outlets, a user can put a sum of money in Paygo and read articles from various sources for a few cents instead. Since more and more media outlets rely on advertising and paid subscriptions, the startup aims to be a solution for both readers and publishers, as a way to create a broad spectrum of access to quality media sources.
Bardin writes, “To remain (or become) a society with the free exchange of ideas and a democratic system that represents the people, we need access to truthful, fact-based information. As someone who subscribes to 8 different publications, I have grown frustrated by repeatedly hitting paywalls and being ‘locked out’ of reading opinions different from those I subscribe to. As a believer in open networks, the move to closed, Paywalled Internet scares me … closed systems create a situation where “The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free.”
