> No print publication on the planet does this.
Because you have to pay for the print version. They have plenty of ads, too, but they're not the sole revenue stream.
Because you have to pay for the print version. They have plenty of ads, too, but they're not the sole revenue stream.
The vast majority of revenue comes from ads. They are just placed and handled in less obnoxious ways.
The March 2026 issue has 12 ads across 109 pages including the back cover. Ads do not appear within an article. I even sometimes read the ads, because many are about new book releases. I opened the cover story (just one article!) of this issue within the mobile app and encountered 38 advertisements. The ads take up nearly half the screen and there is almost always one visible. These 38 instances were just the same four ads repeated many, many times.
This is just one issue of one publication, but it's representative of the broader problem the author discusses. I want to support good journalism and am willing to pay for good writers and articles but strategies that are so frustrating and disrespectful to the reader make it difficult.