I think newspapers in their current form and function are probably dead-men walking. There is a LOT of "old-style," "think within the box" thinking in newspapers - this is especially surprising given that I'd say 85% are liberals. As much as that thinking rules the roost, there's even more snobbish smugness about how important "news" people are to the world in news rooms. But for all the liberal-leaning people in newsrooms, and don't kid yourself, liberals DOMINATE, its a very VERY conservative place as far as form and function of the papers themselves.
I go on this little digression only to note that the problems are deeper than the article I'm about to share. Part of the reason papers are in the trouble they find themselves in is because they aren't forward thinking enough to implement a plan like the one recomended here by Time Magazine author Walter Isaacson.
Newspapers are the kind of place where this idea would get suggested - maybe - bantered about - possibly - and either A) done half assed, or B) discarded as too scary, novel, hard to implement, or just plain different from how things are done or how "news" should be done.
And yes, its some what funny that an article proposing to save newspapers and magazines by charging a microtransaction fee for each story (similiar to texts and I-Tunes) provides a permalink.
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