And so it begins...

The Boston Globe is going to start charging to read its content on boston.com.

I suspect this is the beginning of newspapers charging readers to web access. Otherwise, they're going to fold. It'll be interesting what the Globe charges. I'd be willing to pay a small amount.

I also read a suggestion a while back that newspapers should use an iTunes model - a small fee/article. I think that could work financially. After all, I don't read the entire boston.com site, and if I subscribed to the paper edition I certainly wouldn't be reading the entire paper - which is why I don't subscribe to the paper edition. Maybe if I was retired... But, from a public good standpoint, a fee/article model would increase the trend of printing news that people are interested in as opposed to news that's important - I could see entertainment drivel on celebrity gossip getting more emphasis than real news.

Another thought I had was a cable TV model. With Kindle becoming more popular, readers could subscribe to an internet news delivery service that might provide them with access to different papers, e.g., NY Times, WSJ, Boston Globe, etc. And, to be even more hopeful, the service could be more a la carte than the cable TV. I could get my local papers - The Globe, The Herald, The Boston Phoenix, and any other local newspaper (e.g., The Brookline Tab) as the basic service - and choose X number of extra publications.