Well, it was fun while it lasted.
It seems like the PjMedia Complex — Townhall, Twitchy, and PJM itself are increasingly turning their websites into PPV.
So a link from PJM’s Godfather — Insty — on a big story such as this:
…has the embedded link:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2025/06/17/fbi-hands-congress-documents-with-alarming-allegations-about-the-2020-election-n2658948
When you follow the link, of course it takes you to the Townhall page. However, if like me you hate being bombarded with fucking Facebook links masquerading as ads, or ads that lead you to click-bait sites, ads hawking the books penned by hem hem PJM writers, and (my favorite) pop-up auto-start ads or links) you will have installed an ad-blocker like Adblock or Badger.
So when you get to the Townhall site via that link from Insty, you get a grayed-out screen with this set of options:
Okay, here’s the deal. I can’t afford to be a “VIP” subscriber because quite frankly, my subscription budget is pretty much zero. There’s a plethora of choices for my subscription pennies (note: pennies, not dollars — this is important, as you’ll see later), and PJM VIP is not, shall we say, a premium choice.
Fine, say I, and so I resort to using archive sites like https://archive.is/ to bypass the paywall. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
So, because I want to read all about the Kash Patel / 2020 election thing, I go to DuckDuckGo and type in “kash patel 2020 election”, and get a series of choices. Skipping the left-wing media (NBC, Daily Beast, Newsweek etc.) I find a link to the Washington Examiner, which finally gives me free access to the story I want to read:
FBI Director Kash Patel has turned over a batch of internal documents to Congress detailing allegations that Chinese operatives sought to interfere in the 2020 election by mass-producing fake U.S. driver’s licenses to facilitate fraudulent mail-in voting.
The intelligence, which Patel said on Monday night he had recently declassified, has been sent to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has led oversight efforts into foreign election interference and pressed the bureau to release details surrounding the alleged scheme.
And even worse:
“These include allegations of plans from the CCP to manufacture fake driver’s licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots — allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public,” Patel said.
Let’s be honest, here: this is a really big fucking deal, and if it’s proven to be true, we have two major issues: 1) China was fucking with our election in 2020 — yeah, 81 million Biden votes, kiss my ass, and 2) the FBI knew about it and did sweet fuck-all about it. (And Just The News‘s followup article is even more damning.)
But back to my main point.
Everyone who works has to make a buck to keep the head above the water, individuals as much as organizations, and nothing comes free in this world. I know this, because I am one such person. So PJMedia has every right to require me to pay for their work, i.e. to read their articles.
My problem is that I can’t afford to pay their monthly sub fee because as I said, there are literally hundreds of such subs available. And to be brutally frank, while PJM’s content is quite good, it’s not that good (Stephen Green and only a couple of other writers excepted). Few of the conservative websites are that good, either.
Frankly, if I’m going to be brutally honest: if I can afford only one subscription, I think I may subscribe to the above-mentioned Just The News, because their coverage and editorial stance seems to be what I’m looking for. And the price seems to be about right, too:
OR: 
That’s about $0.12 (twelve cents) per day — about the cost of a newspaper print subscription back in 1960, which sounds about right, for digital content. (I recently got a small tax refund from the IRS, which funded this sub. [irony alert] )
Of course, I may be disappointed — one usually is, in matters of this nature, as I was with an earlier subscription to Epoch Times, quickly canceled — but what the hell, it’s only money and information, right?
So I’ll be linking to a lot of JTN articles in the future. Let me know if they start playing reindeer games with their pages (like PJM outlets do) and I’ll just post longer excerpts.
PJ Media is about the only current events subscription I pay for. I get the VIP subscription which gets the premium articles on all their sites, Townhall, Redstate, Hotair, etc. Each of their sites has a couple of good columnists, a few okay ones, and a couple of worthless ones. It takes time to figure out which is which, but that happens whenever you go to a different news source. I don’t recognize any of the names at Just the News, so reading their stuff would be another batch of writers to vet. I don’t trust editors and gatekeepers anymore, so any new writer is on probation with me until I get to know them. When people link to other paywalled sites I just skip whatever stupid article the publication didn’t want to show me.
I haven’t subscribed to any of those sites. I’d like to but I spend enough on a couple of subscriptions on streaming tv. I have a tv app subscription to MyOutdoorTV and MakeReadyTV. The first one is outdoor stuff like hunting and fishing with some shooting and the second is all How to type shooting shows. I get very streaky with watching either of them.
I used to have subscriptions to various gun magazines but after a while I found I didn’t read them from cover to cover. Often they sat unread until another issue or three arrived.
I used to read townhall regularly but Mike Adams is gone so I stopped reading it. Too often I find that I get a couple of paragraphs into current event articles and I get so pissed that I just shut it down and walk away.
I look at Ammoland regularly, once in a while I read an article or two at AmericanThinker.com
The follow-up article needs more publicity as the FBI wasn’t just getting evidence of the CCP interfering in the election, the FBI asked all agencies to: The recall notice specifically asked spy agencies to erase or delete the original intelligence memo, the memos show.
So the FBI didn’t just know about the CCP interference. It was covering up the CCP interference. So that makes the FBI accomplices in the 2020 election illegalities.
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Regarding ad blockers: 1) it keeps all the trash from appearing, which you noted. 2) it keeps 3rd party viruses & trojans from being downloaded to your computer, and that’s more important. One past example was Forbes refusing to display an article until you disabled your ad blocker, and the people who did got infected via a 3rd party ad that Forbes was displaying.
Reader view in Firefox sometimes works too. There’s also 12ft.io, which is similar to archive.is.
I subscribed to VIP and found that I read very few of the VIP only articles. Note that there are three levels – so what I found is that I’d find a piece I’d want to read, and I’d need ‘gold’ or ‘platinum’ status. I’m not playing that game.
Just the News is good. I subscribed to ground.news. It’ll aggregate the stories from left to right with all the foreign press as well. Get jammed on a paywall, just click another outlet.
BTW – they want you to subscribe, but otherwise see their ads. I use Brave, so I’m not turning the shields down for a media site. I found if I closed the browser and reopened it, it let me past.
I’ve been peeling back from hitting that site. I’m kind of tired of the daily tongue bath they give Israel.
Right after I wrote this, I hit pjmedia and recalled why I don’t spend a ton of time there any longer:
“But here’s the reality: Russia isn’t issuing this warning from a position of military strength. Its forces are still deeply bogged down in Ukraine, sanctions batter its economy, and its air force is depleted. Any serious intervention on Iran’s behalf is likely off the table.”
That is more than likely wrong, and probably a talking point. That’s an article by a David Manney. But Stephen Greene does it as well. You can find out it’s otherwise with a few clicks. It’s not like you can’t find sources these days, compare, and learn the truth. These guys say stuff like this but never offer proof, which puts off the stink of neocon talking points. It takes little effort and no money to subscribe to a few substacks where those that know better bring the receipts.
A few weeks ago I delelted my bookmark to The Daily Mail’s website because far too many articles had the “Exclusive” marking on them – meaning you had to be a sursciber. Oh well. Ta ta and all that. Instapundit usually warns you with a “[VIP]” in the headline. Again, oh well, since I too don’t have the cash to subscribe and I’ve been wary of their levels of subscription.
Anyway, I can usually get the news behind the PJMedia article from elsewhere – Rantingly, Ace of Spacdes, American Thinker, Victory Girls Blog, The Laughing Wolf, and some substack writers. If Isubscibed to them all how could I afford ammo?
Andy, if you use the https://archive.is/ prefix and paste the DM page after it, you’ll usually get access to the original article.