ABSTRACT
Whenever a new technology emerges, traditional media that suff er from audience declines tend to have high—but often unrealistic—expectations for the new medium, as evidenced by U.S. newspaper companies’ experiment with Internet news delivery since the mid-1990s (Boczkowski, 2004). Despite continued growth in online usage (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2008), newspapers have found it difficult to translate usage into revenue. One of the most recent (but also long-lasting) debates among online news publishers surrounds the feasibility of the subscription or micropayment model, asking (again), “Is paid content a solution or an impossible dream?” (Edmonds, 2009; Saba, 2009; Shields, 2009).
