The CNN Paywall

It’s been a year since CNN put a paywall on its website. On and off I have considered a question that I will ask here–why in the hell would anyone pay for this shit? What on Earth does anyone get from CNN political commentary that you would pay for it???? It’s really befuddling. I see why would one would pay for overtly partisan content, regardless of the ideology. I get paying for the legacy newspapers who at least pay for good reporters, even if their editorial content is absolute trash like the Washington Post and to a lesser extent the New York Times. I get paying for longer form journalism and opinion in various publications that are mostly in decline in our broken clickbait world.

What I don’t get is paying for CNN pablum. Is there a market that appeals to both performative centrism and a lack of interest in reading anything remotely interesting? I can understand the former, I can sort of understand the latter, I can’t understand paying money for the combination of the two. The only thing CNN has offered of value for years is, and I am being generous here, OK election night coverage. But there’s nothing on CNN that you can’t get better elsewhere. Nothing! I get that people go to websites by habit.

So my question is: a) is anyone actually paying for this and b) why?

This seems like a perfectly reasonable discussion for a Sunday.