How I Wind Up Subscribing to So Many Independent Media Sites

One of the hazards of being a blogger, or just a person with nearly unlimited curiosity, is that it is often impossible to pass by when something interesting crosses your (metaphorical) desk. 

It nags at me. I want to know more. I want to see if I missed something. Have I got the full story? 

It's not on one subject. It can potentially be anything, as long as it captures my attention. And when it hits close to home, I can't resist, even if it winds up draining my bank account. 

Unsurprisingly, because we all gotta eat, a lot of what I want to see or read is behind a paywall, and in principle I don't object to that at all. Matt Taibbi's gotta eat too, and if he winds up getting rich (I hope so!) because he is good at doing genuinely thoughtful and fascinating journalism, all the better. 

The media world has disaggregated; there used to be relatively few media outlets, and for a reasonable subscription price you could get access to a lot of good (or passable) columnists, and your total cost was fairly reasonable. Of course, there was a hidden price to that: Pravda was curating what you saw, and over the years The Narrative™ became inescapable. 

Then the internet happened, and Craigslist destroyed the newspaper industry, media outlets on cable proliferated, and then YouTube spawned a whole new video podcast industry, and best of all, a bunch of brilliant independents whom you would never have discovered rose to the top. The talent pool exploded, and Pravda couldn't really compete if you wanted quality. 

The downside? What used to be one or three subscriptions has turned into ten, or twenty, or God knows how many? All I know is that my wife keeps asking me, "Do you watch these guys anymore?" every month as we try to pare down our subscription bloat, which is bankrupting us. 

(Hey, boss, can we talk about subsidies for subscriptions?)

This just happened to me again, which is why I am writing this screed. I just got hooked on a $10/month subscription to The Fifth Column because of this teaser. I just have to watch it. 

As soon as COVID hit from Wuhan, media pushed stories of anti-Asian hate crimes-
using “racism” to shut down questions about the virus and lab leak.
Nancy Pelosi filmed a video telling people to go to Chinatown.
She said she trusts Dr. Fauci
Other Dems followed ! pic.twitter.com/25yIEAZ5sB

— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) August 14, 2026

Terry Moran, a former ABC News reporter, dropped a bombshell I had never heard before about how Fauci helped censor a piece he did at the beginning of COVID. 

Now I'm no Moran fan. He just left ABC after a vile tweet aimed at Stephen Miller and President Trump made his staying at ABC News basically untenable. 

Terry Moran has apparently been suspended over this tweet, which is the right reaction from ABC, but I’d also add that he should seek help. These are not the words of a well individual. pic.twitter.com/SsTmr6kN35

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) June 8, 2025

The guy is clearly a thing that rhymes with glasshole. 

But I simply HAVE to hear that story, so I shelled out $10 to hear this man I dislike and distrust dish the dirt about a man and an institution that I dislike and distrust even more. 

This happens to me all the time. 

Then there are the independent journalists I support because they do good work. I could get most of their content without paying up, but I want them to succeed and even get rich off their work because nobody else is doing it quite like they can. People like Catherine Herridge, whose investigative work is invaluable, and I want to do my part to help her. It's a far better investment than throwing cash at a huge NGO that claims to save children and puppies but which instead provides a sinecure for people in their post-political life, or which secretly funds the third-world migrant crisis.

Unfortunately, I end up impoverishing myself and having to cull my subscriptions monthly just to keep my head above water. As much as I flatter myself, I know I am not the entrepreneurial type likely to grind it out and build a media brand as these folks do. For every Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Konstantin Kisin, there are a million plodders who dream of hitting it big in the media world. 

The media world is a perfect example of the Tournament Economy, in which the people in the top slots do amazingly well, and the people who are just SLIGHTLY behind them are also-rans. The top three in the Olympics get the medals, and the person who comes in fourth, a hundredth of a second behind, is just a guy on the street. Actors live in a tournament economy. Media stars do too. 

I am not in either camp. I love what I do here, and Ed is the one risking everything to let me do it for a living. 

Still, just as we are willing to plop down cash to see Tom Cruise do something wild, I get hooked into subscriptions for much the same reason. It's a compulsion.

At the very least, I hope that my subscription addiction serves a purpose: vacuuming up all that content helps me synthesize it all and hopefully make it make sense at times for my readers. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.