Should online news be free?
No. Why should anything that’s created with someone’s sweat be free? Why should people be expected to work for free? Plumbing isn’t for free. When you go to a doctor for medical advice, that’s not for free. If you send somebody to Darfur and risk their life to bring back a story, why should that be for free?
Now the internet is great and is very empowering for those of us who deal in communications and media, but it also makes it very easy to duplicate information. Information has sort of lost its moorings in the sense it used to be tied to a piece of paper, or a particular broadcast, and once you can duplicate something and pass it along for free it makes it harder to charge for that.
To survive [newspapers] are going to have to find out ways to bring in revenue, and if it’s not advertising it’s going to have to be people paying for the product.