It amazes me that Murdoch and Brill and the Paywall Team at the Times continue to believe that people are prepared to pay for news online — despite the recent survey showing that 80 percent of U.S. news consumers say they „wouldn’t bother“ to read news and magazines online if the content were no longer free.
Sure, free news content is not a perfect system but it’s a lot like what Churchill said about democracy: it „is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.“ That’s the reality. Free content is not without problems. But it’s here to stay, and publishers need to come to terms with that and figure out how to make it work for them.