Wonderwall

Uphoff on Media Podcast · May 6, 2026 · 19m

There’s a lyric from the Oasis song “Wonderwall” that’s been living rent-free in my head every time I read another paywall story: “I said maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.” That’s the emotion publishers brought to paywalls when the model went mainstream in the early 2010s. Not strategy. Emotion. Hope masquerading as a business plan.

I don’t say that to be cruel. I say it because I was in the room. I watched publishers, smart operators with real businesses, latch onto the paywall narrative the way drowning people grab floating debris. The economics of digital media were already…