John Oliver Tells Us to Pay for Journalism

Remember when Spotlight won Best Picture this last year? Remember when you were proud of what journalism could do and then went back to reading listicles the next day? Yeah, you need to stop that.

In last night’s segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the “not a journalist” journalist laments how badly the newspaper industry is suffering. Journalists are reduced to being forced to write about what’s going to get the most likes and retweets, not what actually matters.

And it’s because of us. We are not willing to pay for news that affects our day-to-day lives.

“We are either going to have to pay for journalism or we are going to pay for it,” Oliver says. Preach.

Soon, all that’s fit to print will be puppies learning to walk and grandmas learning to use Snapchat filters. Trust us, that’ll get old real fast.

Oliver’s message: Pay for your news. Read more than the allotted ten articles a month.

Watch the full segment above.