Almost no one pays for content in any medium. Today, following last year's Great Internet Disillusion, people no longer care what information wants. Information can go inform itself, because information providers want to get paid. Investors are suddenly asking for some plausible theory of how and when a Web site might be expected to make money. The reigning notion today is that the laws of economics are not, after all, suspended in cyberspace like the laws of gravity in outer space.
Content needs to be paid for on the Web just as in any other medium.
We tried charging the customers at Slate . It didn't work. Future experiments may be more successful, and we at Slate encourage others to jump in. But meanwhile, let's look again at this notion that in every medium except the Internet people pay for the content they consume. It's not really true.