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For those that think it's a stupid move to start charging, answer me this?
The newspapers are already on-line for free and filled with ads and are still going bankrupt. What will change in the future to make them profitable using the free model? They are already doing exactly what you say, and they are going out of business. How do you explain that? How will staying on the same course suddenly start making them money?
Most people don't realize that on-line advertising is for the most part, worthless relative to other forms of advertising in regards to revenue for the publisher. In it's current form of banners and links it will never cover the cost of running an actual news bureau with offices and reporters around the world. You can run a scraper site that basically culls information from other sites or only makes short blog posts and be able to cover the costs with advertising. But not when you are the ones actually doing the legwork and writing the stories everyone else is just recycling and blogging about.
People who think free is the future believe they are ahead of the curve, but in fact, they are behind the times. They still can't see a digital product as a real product.
You're living in the past if you think there is a difference between a real product and a digital product.
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