- 83% of Americans have not paid for news in the last year, according to Pew Research.
- Only 1% that do encounter a paywall are willing to pay for access to news.
- While most say that they can find what they're looking for for free, 32% say that they are simply not interested enough to pay.
The business of news is facing a plethora of challenges in 2025. Public trust is the lowest it’s been in 50 years, revenue has been declining, public officials express outright animosity towards the media and the newest and least well-understood challenges stem from myriad changes brought on by artificial intelligence.
Within those challenges, however, media organizations face one that’s more straightforward: Americans simply do not want to pay for news.
According to research done by Pew Research Center published in June, “the vast majority of Americans (83%) say they have not paid for news in the past year.”
Only 17% of respondents said that they’ve given any money to a news organization — through subscription, donation or joining a membership — when encountering a paywall. And, of those that do run up against paid access restrictions, only 1% said they load in their payment details.
These statistics paint a grim picture for an industry navigating foundation-shifting changes to its business model.
Many media organizations do not put their content behind paywalls at all, which is likely why more than half of respondents said that the reason they did not pay is because they are able to find the information for free in other places.
Pew has conducted other research that shows 86% of Americans get their news from a digital device like their phones, tablets or computers most of the time. And while that is the majority, almost two-thirds watch television for the news, too.
In addition to the major broadcast networks such as Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC and the wire service, The Associated Press, there are some primarily digital news organizations that do not put their content behind a paywall. Deseret News is among those that do not charge for the news.
Pew also found several other reasons why people were unwilling to pay. Instead of getting the answers they were looking for, a third said they would instead just give up their search.
While some 10% found it to be too expensive and another 8% thought it was not good enough to justify the expense, a far larger 32% of respondents said “they are not interested enough” to pay for the news.
Pew also broke down the 17% of Americans that do pay for the news, which it weighted along income, age, political and educational lines.
A quarter of those aged 65 or older paid for the news, as opposed to only 12% of the youngest adults (aged 18-29). On the political spectrum, it broke out as 21% of Democrats paying for news, just a few percentage points above the 14% of Republicans or GOP-leaning respondents who did so. Among those who paid for news, 27% graduated college versus 9% with a high school diploma or less.
How those in the highest- and lowest-income bracket answered fell along intuitive lines, with 30% of the highest earners paying for news compared to 8% of the lowest income who did the same.