For years, the beginning of my morning is sitting with the New York Times, turning the pages, reading the sections one by one, and not only learning but truly enjoying the sheer quality of the writing.  I think all who have grown up with newspapers arriving at their homes feel the same way.

But that is us .   .   . and ahead of us we already see the future — already so different than the world that we have known before the advent of instant news, transmitted as it happens on our TVs.  There is a rush to our lives that we have not seen before.  The more leisurely times seem gone and we can catch the news on the streets on our latest gadgets that become more sophisticated by the day.

It seems like sacrilege to question, BUT we are seeing newspapers and magazines thinning in the last months, and many failing.  Doesn’t it seem that the handwriting is on the wall?  I have a feeling that the upcoming generations are not going to pay for a newspaper online.  They aren’t as discriminating - for the most part - as we have been.  The bare bones will do - and they will do their own investigation if they want details. 

Do I like the thought.  I hate it.  But technology has changed our world — and continues to as I write.  I see so many things that I hold dear disappearing.  For newspapers - and before too long - the die is cast.

I think they should keep it free on line, but post it 3 days later.

If they want the current news, they have to purchase the paper.

If they do start charging for on line news, they need to make sure to follow-up on stories, and correct misinformation.

 One thing though… if they charge for info, that wil be coppied and pasted on other sites….. so it would still be able to be found for free.

Isn’t the question better phrased as:  why pay for newspapers on the Kindle (and Sony Reader, etc.) when it can be viewed for free online?  There is a gap in technologies that is not being addressed. 

Roger from Ohio has a point.  There are strong-willed people on the internet who believe information (and movies, tv shows) should be the "right of the people", and they are sincere in working toward making everything free of charge.  Sooner or later that philosophy will weaken the quality of the information presented.  One example is Wikipedia.  How many times has Wikipedia been presented as an information source when we know it is written by anyone, anyone at all, and entirely undependable, unreliable. 

I don’t know the answer to this question.  People respect a news source when they have to pay hard-earned money for it.  We may be better off for the fee if it means we pay journalists for their work online, and reward all those years of schooling. 

It’s called Blowback. Save Al Franken, Vanity Fair, Buzzflash, Truthout. Alternet, Peace and Justice and a few key bloggers during the run-up to Bush’s phony criminal war; the rightwing propaganda machine branded everyone who dared tell the truth, ‘terrorist loving America haters who needed to have a fist full of Freedom Fries crammed down their throats before they were shipped off to a CIA Black Site.’

The NYT quaked in it’s designer boots. And the Left realized it had no analogue to the Fox/NeoCon propaganda machine.  

Little by little MoveOn, HuffPo, et al gathered steam. Lefties learned to love it in Cyberspace. And the NYT and others who failed the US by not doing their job to be a counterweight to the WDC war machine, not screaming about the dangers of deregulated derivatives in 2001, are now dealing with the seachanges they set in motion. Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, were a couple of the few at the NYT who stayed true. Tom Friedman was pandering and wrong and even mocked his wife in his column, when she was right. Friedman was a cheerleader for the bloody phony mess he would soon decry, and then cry some more that we are so gone on the environment with all the time and $$ wasted even the Pentagon predicts catastrophic abrubt climate change.  Thanks to all the flatlanders, myopics, cowards and imbeciles that put us in this position. 

And now they wonder how they can get us to pay?

A little authenticity, guts and truth in 2002 would have gone a long way.

Payback’s a b*tch. Everything’s online including Le Monde diplomatique, the Toronto Sun, The Economist, der Spiegel. I too, used to love to go out for a cappuccino, croissant and NYT in the AM. The NYT’s betrayed me….haven’t read it since.

Should they charge? Sure if they want to lose their audience disappear. They need to hustle and get ad $$$. New Media boys and girls. Some will make some won’t….maybe even the Grey Lady.