The Future of Good Government Files: A Leap Toward Exclusive Insights

Valuing Quality: Our transition to a paid model underscores our commitment to delivering exclusive, thought-provoking content on governance

Astute readers, or those who didn't do too much drinking over the holidays, will recall I wrote at the end of 2023 that I would be putting up a paywall on Good Government Files “in coming months.” Indeed, that time has just about arrived.

Come April, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to read the Friday posts in full. I’ll continue to offer up TL;dr for free at mid-week because I can’t in good conscience ask you to pay for my curated takes on someone else’s original work.

I offer the following explanation because we have an important relationship, dear reader. I owe it to you to share my thinking on this transition. I’ll spare you the armchair psychoanalysis of why I find it difficult to ask for help for pretty much anything in my life, but I will share some insights into the timing of why a paywall now.

First, because I said I would back in December. It’s a Good Government Files Truism that we need to mean what we say and say what we mean. I said it then because I knew I needed to do it for personal and business reasons. I’m investing too much time and effort to produce GGF content to continue to offer it all for free.

Second, a couple of people who I know, love, and really respect both seemed puzzled/amused that I was giving it away. “Are you just doing this out of the goodness of your heart?” one asked. The other questioned whether I had truly returned to writing as a profession if I was offering it for free.

Sharing the good news of government done right is certainly a passion for me. But to continue to give it away — even out of the (questionable) goodness of my heart — infers there’s not value in the stories I’m sharing. Obviously, I believe these are stories worth telling.

The comment on being a professional but providing my content gratis struck a different nerve.

Last month I read Martin Baron’s book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post.”¹ Baron was executive editor of the Post from January 2013 to 2021. (You more likely know of him through his portrayal by (the great) Liev Shreiber in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.”)

Amazon founder and world’s richest human Jeff Bezos bought the Post in September 2013. Baron notes Bezos did not buy the Post as an act of philanthropy. He fully intended to turn a profit through quality journalism and by creating great digital versions of the product. Slowly but surely, the approach began working. Writes Baron:

As Bezos saw it, we now had an opportunity to recover from years of giving away our journalism for free on the internet, in contrast to how we had always charged for print newspapers. Setting up a “paywall,” as we called it, was finally yielding impressive results. …

Throughout the summer of 2017, Bezos continued to press for tightening the paywall. “We’ve gone through a twenty-year period where this industry has trained people to think that news was free.” Now, he said, we were in the “awkward, painful period where we say, “We were just kidding about that.’” No question the new strategy was effective. “Paywalls work,” wrote one reader on Twitter. “Shortly after bumping against my 2648th blocked @washingtonpost link on Twitter last night, I got a digital subscription.”

The former newspaper journalist in me agrees wholeheartedly: Hell yeah, folks need to pay for quality writing and reporting. That said, hopefully it won’t take you 2,648 blocks before you subscribe. Given that you’ll need to pay only to read Friday posts in their entirety, that would take 47 years. I’d love to still be around in 2071 (at least, I think I would) but I’m pretty sure you won’t be interested in reading the musings of a guy pushing 110. I’m very sure I won’t be interested in sharing any musings for public consumption — free or paid — at that point.

Come April, I hope you’ll be willing to follow the direction of Teddy KGB, the character played by (the also great) John Malkovich in “Rounders.”

If you’d like a save a few rubles, subscribe now because prices will go up in April. I’m producing more content today than I was when we launched GGF in June, so I believe it is justified to go from $5 to $7 per month and from $60 to $70 for an annual subscription. I’ll also begin offering a 20% discount for group subscriptions.

Before the paywall kicks in, I want to get some feedback from you guys. How can I improve GGF? What topics would you like to see covered? These questions and more will be included in a reader survey I’ll send in a separate email early next week. For now, we need to get back to some good governing.

Gov Ephemera: Hits & Misses

Sweet tidings for Sugar Land, Texas: Residents of the Houston suburb gave the city high marks in its biennial community survey. A whopping 97 percent of respondents rated the city as an “excellent” or “good” place to live and 95 percent rated the city as an “excellent” or “good” place to raise children. Resident satisfaction with city services are 30 points higher than peer cities in the United States. Those are impressive numbers, folks. How are they doing it? I’d hazard a guess they take their mission, vision and priorities seriously as “A city that is relentlessly pursuing a life better than you can even imagine.” Love, love, love it! On the downside, people are frustrated with traffic congestion. Take it from someone who knows: That’s an eternal issue for Texas suburban cities bisected by an interstate highway.

Memory eternal for Chief Zeb Smith: Fritch (Texas) Fire Chief Zeb Smith, 40, died March 5 while fighting a structure fire in the Texas panhandle. The blaze was not related to the wildfires that have scorched more than 1 million acres in that part of the state. Cause of death has not been determined and an autopsy has been ordered, according to a news report. Chief Smith is survived by his wife and two sons.

Thank God it was only the firework show: This headline caught my shellfish-loving eye — “Oysterfest cuts back due to inflation.” The annual fundraiser for the Fulton Volunteer Fire Department was forced to ax the fireworks show that typically kicks off the event in Fulton, Texas, home to one of the Lone Star State’s best beaches. Fulton Mayor Kelli Cole said they paid $30,000 for a 14-minute show last year. “Even without the firework show, Cole said she’s certain crowds will show up and shuck out,” according to a news report. Please pass the horseradish and cocktail sauce.

A different, and very depressing, kind of news value: Governing reported only 44 people out of 2,529 accepted an offer for a free subscription to their local newspapers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer. “That’s less than 2%, reports an academic study set to be published this year in the American Journal of Political Science,” Governing wrote. “The purpose of the research was to assess practical ways to increase interest in local or regional news for an audience that seems more interested in national, partisan media outlets. (The pool of those offered subscriptions was made up of locals who had previously responded to political surveys.) The findings add context to what has been a difficult start to 2024 for American media.” This is terrible news for my former profession, but all the more reason why local government should make serious investments in communications and marketing. I guarantee that’s one of the reasons Sugar Land residents feel so good about their municipal government. In fact, the effectiveness of their communications efforts is nearly 40 points higher than other U.S. cities.

Onward and Upward.

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