The story The Town With a Song in Its Heart in the New York Times (warning: probably paywalled, but I did try to use a “gift link”) is one of those articles that is made for me. It’s a story about some little town I’ve never heard of, beautiful and full of charm, that takes its music seriously but not terribly commercially, and has a hero video of cool young people tearing up some old time on a porch. ((Melts))
It’s also the story that had me thinking about how to link to paywalled stuff and why I posted this poll.
I’m not sure I’ve formed a strong opinion on this yet, so I’m just going with the winning option “Link to original, warn about paywall.” I don’t like circumventing a paywall, as it’s an honest business model and feels quite rude. But on the other hand… I’m trying to write about a thing and link to it. I don’t want to annoy anyone reading or come off like I’m an advertisement, so what should I do? Never link to anything paywalled? Maybe? But don’t love that either?
“Link to original, warn about paywall” is entirely reasonable, in my opinion. It can be as simple as a link followed by “(paywall)” or “(subscription required)”.