And if I may, one could easily argue that the news organizations embraced jumped on the electronic bandwagon too quickly or, perhaps more accurately, without sufficiently thought. Giving away their product for free on the web is part of the reasons for their current financial crises.

One day I hear newspapers might be a thing of the past, but who knows they are so useful in this internet/electronic age.

Plus I especially hope the NYT dies a long agonizing flaming death from forcing me to register just to view their online articles (I’ve successfully managed to avoid that though).

In all seriousness if a business model doesn’t work anymore, well it doesn’t work anymore. Newspapers had plenty of opportunity to jump on the electronic bandwagon, but they missed the boat in a big way.

True, newspapers really screwed themselves when they embraced this troublesome idea that content should be free just because it is accessed online. They have finally opened their eyes, and consumers of news will have to do the same.

To be clear, I am not advocating that everyone pay for the NY Times. (Opinions about that paper certainly vary!) I am strongly advocating that the majority of people who consume news pay for some part of it, preferably via a subscription to a product tied to an organization that can fund large domestic and international news-gathering operations or local operations, whether it is the NYT, WSJ, or other paper you prefer. Your subscription to the WSJ helps me access it though I have no subscription. My subscription to the NYT helps fund other people’s access to it even though they may not subscribe.

Nothing is free, especially not quality information updated daily.

For general news I would have to say no, I would not pay for it. Just to many other sources that have it available for free.

All such a fee would do is drive down their already dwindling readership – which would further reduce ad revenue.

If they want to make money: Improve the CONTENT.
(Stop looking for magic pills)

but newspapers are a weird world anymore. I like the feel of a newspaper but don’t have time to really read one anymore.

I did subscribe to the WSJ back when they had a paper + net access rate in the ~50bucks/year. I felt that that was a good deal. When it jumped to ~150 I didn’t think that the value was there. (the numbers are fuzzy since this was last year).

What I would pay for would be some sort of revenue sharing between a couple of the paper companies, something like a go-between so that I could get the NYT, Bloomberg, WSJ, etc on all of my devices (web, iphone, kindle) for a decent rate with a good interface. (I do like the NYT layout, etc)

Of course the news should allow customization, etc. Even better would be the same article side by side from the multiple sources.

I would do 9.99/month for a group of papers, and the sunday comics of course

now I just need to get a couple million folks to join me.

i do think that it’s important to have multiple news sources not tied back to the same owners/agenda.