Okay print media – how about this: Why don’t you start operating like NPR? Offer high quality news and information to the public, for free, as a non-profit enterprise? The main alternative, I guess, is to charge what it actually costs – which would create a huge information gap between the poor and the wealthy.

Sure, you’d have to start paying your full-time journalists and op/ed folks and top editors and publishers non-profit wages. And I suppose we’d soon see how passionately people believe in a free press when they have to actually live on non-profit wages.

But at least as a non-profit you’d be responsible to the public as part of a civic trust – maybe the government would help subsidize a free press through grant programs. And you could subsist on public donations, support of foundations, etc.

Welcome to the poor side of town.

Of course, there are other models imaginable. Consolidation of newsgathering apparatus and infrastructure with costs amortized over a distributive network. I’m sure with all those smart people and all that money at stake, they’ll figure out something.

In the meantime, know that we barbarians are banging at the gates, waiting to have our say.

To be continued…