I agree that news outlets serve an important function. That's exactly why it is especially disheartening to see them turn into organs of surveillance capitalism.

Regardless, if you attempt to extort me with a choice between privacy or an uninformed populace, I'll happily share my view on where exactly you can stick that and spin. There are decent media outlets doing good work out there who can report and respect their readers at the same time [1].

I frankly don't care if the papers who can't figure out how to function without selling out their customers fail. Let their corpses be a cautionary tale.

[1] One outlet I subscribe to, Talkingpointsmemo.com, is in the process of offering ad-free options. I blocked them previously, and they've made no effort to break the site in the presence of blockers.