[robg]

How do you properly compensate those that do the hardest work in getting "the facts" if endless copies can be made cheaply?

I suppose the answer is something like iTunes for the news. However, I'm not confident that market forces can pick the best reporting. I mean, Fox News does really well financially. How many people do they have in Haiti?

[roc]

The difficult-to-collect facts would be those necessary for in-depth and investigative pieces. I specifically called that out above as being pay-worthy. I can absolutely see for-pay access to those news pieces.

What doesn't work --can't work-- is charging for things like box scores, election results, stock news, press releases, traffic/crime/weather. (Excepting perhaps extremely time-sensitive subsets of that data.)

And if the NYTimes isn't discriminating between their quality, signature content and simple daily news - the customer isn't going to either. They're just going to be frustrated that if they try to use the NY Times for more than 1 big story a month, they're penalized. Or, god forbid, try to read the NYTimes.com at work, at the library or at a coffee shop...