One of the ideas that has been circulating recently has been the suggestion that newspapers start charging web visitors for the privilege of reading the articles that appear on line. Thetried that a couple of years ago, but only for a select portion of the paper, namely, the top tier columnists such as Krugman, Dowd, Herbert, Rich, Friedman. The trial balloon lasted about a year, and then was abruptly discontinued. While no official reason was given, I suspect advertisers, who had been promised millions of eyes each day were dissatisfied with the actual number of visitors willing to pay for the whole tier of columnists when only one or two of them were of interest.That didn't kill the pay-per-view concept, however. Now, with newspapers facing serious revenue shortfalls, some even filing for bankruptcy protection, a more concerted effort to charge for web reading is rolling out. Tim Rutten of thedevoted his column today to suggesting that the federal government should step in, give anti-trust status to the news industry (!) so that it could save itself.[Emphasis added]Now that's an interesting solution. Newspapers are increasingly owned by corporations, many by the same set of corporations, which are more interested in profit than delivering news. Those few corporations also own television and radio stations, often in the same city. They essentially have a corner on the market. Now they want the federal government to protect that market by exempting from anti-trust laws?No, thank you. Really.First of all, the entire print newspaper is not published on websites. One gentlemen trying to sell me a subscription to the paper version of thetold me that only about 15% of each day's content is on-line. I don't know how accurate that is, but I wouldn't exactly be shocked if it were completely accurate. Fine. If I need to see Doonesbury, I'll pay the $.75 to buy the paper version.If the newscorps want to increase their income, they might try putting out the real journalism Bill Keller theorized about. More people might show up, making advertisers happy, happy enough to pay. Of course, a newspaper filled with relevant news covered honestly and fairly might also sell at the news stand for reading during the day. It's hard to tell because it's been so long since we've seen a major newspaper engage in that kind of journalism on a sustained basis.The last thing the nation needs, however, is yet another boost to the corporatocracy by granting an anti-trust exemption and permission for price fixing.Nice try, Mr. Rutten, but you'll have to do better.

Labels: Corporate Welfare, Free Press