WSJ and FT are specialized news and analysis that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Unless everyone in the newspaper industry starts charging all at once, the pay walls for other news sites will effectively go away.

IMO, this sort of thing is ultimately inevitable, and I don't think that the Internet is the ultimate cause (it's an accelerant, at best) -- I think that it's been getting harder for newspapers to compete with the depth of coverage provided "for free"* by television news organizations.

* When's the last time you paid a bill to CNBC or CNN? I don't pay an explicit bill for CBC Newsworld -- it's included in my cable package.

David Simon recently urged the NYT and WP to start charging, at the same time: http://www.cjr.org/feature/build_the_wall_1.php?page=all

The cable model is interesting. Perhaps such sites could work out deals with ISPs - you'd pay a few more bucks each month and in return get free account on WSJ, NYT etc.

The 'at the same time' is telling. That's collusion.

AFAIK that is an excellent way to get into trouble with the law, and if it isn't then it should be.

You are supposed to come up with your price independently and without 'backtalk' in the boardroom.

If two gas stations get caught doing this they'll end up in serious trouble, I don't see why it should be any different when you're running newspapers.

Yeah, he's aware of that.. "And when the Justice Department lawyers arrive, briefcases in hand, to ask why America’s two national newspapers did these things in concert [..] you can answer directly: We never talked. Not a word. We read some rant in the Columbia Journalism Review that made the paywall argument. Blame the messenger."

Check out the article - it's the same guy who created The Wire, he's not a bad writer :)

To tell two people to collude does not give them any right to do so claiming there was no communication between them, effectively there was. They both could check if the other party was holding up their end of the deal on their respective websites. I highly doubt a judge would fall for it.

It's clever though, that's for sure. But like most typical layman attempts at 'hacking' the court system it would probably fail. Judges are not nearly as stupid as people seem to take for granted.

Sure, he's not really serious about that. But I think it's not improbable that many publications will start charging around the same time. The competition factor is overrated, IMHO - people who really want to read the Times will pay even when the Post is free, just as raising the print price to $2 increased revenues even though it's freely available online.