Published Tuesday, May 19, 2009, Classified News Blog by Daype Classifieds

The demise of the newspaper has garnered a lot of media coverage these past few months. And all over the US, the heart of the world’s current economic crisis, companies are tightening their belts. Many newspapers, once thought to be essential media, are thought to be on the verge of collapse, as internet advertising models have been unsuccessful, and the failure of a paid web content model.

But is the idea of paid web content really so terrible?

Think for a minute. When’s the last time you paid for any sort of media content? Was it when you flicked on your cable to watch The Daily Show last night? Or perhaps it was this morning when you read Guess How Much I Love You to your little girl before leaving for work? As you’ve probably realized, paid content is not a new idea – every day we pay for some piece of media content, and the money we spend trickles down to those generating the content. Most people take this for granted; after all, when’s the last time you heard a woman complain about paying for a book at the local Barnes and Noble?

Enter the internet. When newspapers first started publishing online, many tried a paid web content model and found it very quickly floundered. And now, with the proliferation of blogs and would-be journalists online, it seems almost suicidal to re-introduce the idea…[more]