The biggest challenge for newspapers has been that the public has far more choices for news, information, and diversion than in the past.
Even non-commercial media rely on transferring cost to users through licence fees, donations from listeners, viewers, or readers, or grants from companies and foundations that have wrestled their funds from the public in some form of earlier commercial activity.
Charging for news online won't work if what is provided is the same as is available elsewhere.
It is useless to put news agency stories behind the paid curtain because they are available in thousands of other places that will be free.
Merely transferring the content of existing newspapers online and expecting payment won't work because they are two separate business concepts.
It is usually a mistake to reject something merely because it has been tried before and didn't work.
What most news people don't comprehend is that most of the public are not heavy information seekers - unlike journalists and the smaller portion of the population that is socially, politically and economically active.
I believe that online paid content hasn't worked for general circulation newspapers because consumers weren't ready for it, because the implementation did not deliver enough value, because content was typically the same as in the print version, and because much of the material was being syndicted by the papers to other publishers or was not protected with DRM technologies to exclude use by others.
