Look at how ads have intruded into reading a column in the G & M. It gets worse and worse. Every time the G & M changes the Comments page ostensibly to protect poor sensitive readers from abusive language the Comments page gets less and less enjoyable, less conversational, less civil, more censorious, and more outlandish in the opinions that posters express.
  Do you think the G & M cares about the people, it's readers, democracy? Eleven years ago, reading and posting comments was free without a pay wall. And the editors had enough respect for people posting comments, they used to reserve a special section of the newspaper to publish a selection of the most interesting posts each day.
  Contrarily the last five or six years, the newspapers have created an entirely new scapegoat demographic to explain to their middle class subscribers why newspapers are in financial difficulty and why civilization is breaking down - it's all the fault of folks who post comments on their website.