Go back to the early 2000s and admire all the work people put out for free on the net because they enjoyed doing it. This was thriving, but then people with dollar signs for eyes took over and now we're stuck with them.
True, but also, newspapers were still very financially stable. The number of gainfully employed journalists throughout the U.S. was far greater. Regional and city newspapers thrived. Now, many are dead and many of the survivors are slowly dying. Print news is now looking like a power law: a handful flourish (NYT, WSJ, WaPo, etc.) and a long tail struggles to stay afloat. These outcomes are, in part, created by people's perception that the information generated by news organizations is a both a commodity and is free. Neither is actually true.
Surely the newspapers are partly to blame for this perception going back more than one hundred years: $2 (or whatever) was never the actual cost to fund the news.
During the dot-com-bubble, it was a race for users/eyeballs, with hopes of later profits. It wasn't sustainable. But it was definitely fun while it lasted.
That's the rise of the dollar symbols for eyeballs period. There were plenty of people making things with 0 regard to profit. Think back to all the random little websites or flash games people put countless hours into.
