The other day I thought about media execs saying “we can’t give all our content away for free any more”. Now whether that is true or not is a separate issue. But for the sake of argument – let’s think about it in the opposite way:

We, the readers, have been giving you our time for free. We helped you launch on digital in an amazing way. Your brands are still extremely well recognized, and your web and mobile traffic is, generally speaking, very high in every market – local and global.

But now, we as readers have reached a point where perhaps we should move our reading elsewhere. We’re getting so many roadblocks, bad ads and other trouble that we might simply go somewhere else instead. Perhaps we just can’t give our time away for free any more.

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It is an over-simplification, of course. But the current rhetoric implies that the readers have been a bunch of freeloaders for 10+ years, and that is not correct. It has always been a transaction between the two. The readers have visited and thereby helped media companies to the position where they are today. A position that most companies would _kill to have.

Now, what to do with that position?

Start by appreciating it. And appreciating the readers that got you there.