News last week that The New York Times is considering a five dollar monthly fee for access to its website. I do not understand why newspapers constantly complain about the internet and yet continue to give their expensively-produced content away for free. I would love to think that most people are like me and would never pay for such biased news coverage. But they are not. Many people and many opinion leaders love The Times.
One often reads that content should be free, wants to be free, on the internet. A few years back Michael Kinsley pointed out that content was free long before the internet age. And I have little doubt that this will ultimately prove true for opinion.
But hard news gathering, regardless of how well it's done, is not free. To pretend otherwise is foolish. While advertising paid the freight for print, apparently it is not, yet, capable of doing so online.