Are people going to pay to read newspapers online?

With the advancement of technology, newspaper companies are losing their business to people who can get their information online at the click of a button without having to wait for the paperboy.

Chas Hartman of the University of Kentucky is trying to find an exact number, and currently has a survey set up online that you can fill out. It asks whether or not you read news (which if you don't, it won't do much good to fill out the survey), where you read it, etc. You can find the survey by checking out Gina Chen's blog, where she provides a link.

I think the question on journalist's minds is how they are going to make money if they no longer are publishing articles in newspapers that people have to buy. Eric Alterman wrote an essay for The New Yorker back in 2008 entitled Out of Print: The Life and Death of Newspapers in which he talks about the history of newspapers, and how they are slowly disappearing. As we've heard stated, online journalists do not get paid much of anything to write and article.

Another issue with newspapers going to online is that with social mediums such as Blogger and Twitter, people are able to get short summaries of the news, and from many different sources. There are dozens of different news reporters now online, and each striving to have their blogs and articles followed. While these bloggers and Tweeters may not be news reporters, they are still capable of taking stories and making them their own.

In the end, there will be some people that are willing to pay for news access online, but I feel that more people are going to try to find ways around it. The sites that offer free stories are going to have more people visiting than the one that charge.