Will we have to pay for our news online in the future?

I saw this posted on Yahoo's main page and the link asked, "does society truly need a professional media?". As I read the article, which I provided the link below, it did hit on points I agree with, about bias in journalism, and that newspapers are becoming a thing of the past and I'm sure they'll become extinct in the near future. But have we taken our free speech for granted so much that we may have to pay to see it online someday? This alarms me just a little because if the only source of the news becomes the internet and you have to pay for every article you'd want to read, then how can someone who can't afford this get any kind of news.

I don't really believe the main stream media much anyway, and I haven't bought a paper in a long time but if our news gets confined to just the internet for the regular news, will we have to pay for our alternative news as well? Of course the news will still always be on tv, but if they are controlling our media enough, the news you see on tv could just mention a story but if want any kind of details, suscribe online to get it. This is all probably no big deal, but I also know how something like this can be abused. I'm mainly just wondering what everyone's opinions were on this.



news.yahoo.com...

[edit on 25-2-2009 by itinerantseeker]

if the only source of the news becomes the internet and you have to pay for every article you'd want to read, then how can someone who can't afford this get any kind of news.

The same way people get software, movies, music, etc. that cost money but they pay nothing for

Even if mainstream news became a pay per view service that doesn't stop anyone from leaking the information, even if somewhat out of its original context from just word of mouth.

They're would be bloggers that subscribe and then they would do write ups of the articles.

They will try to make us pay, but it will fail miserably unless they control the net. Through censorship and the like.

I'd Imagine it would be more like that thing Amazon has out where you buy the thing and then buy e-books that download straight to it. Instead you would pay x amount for the papers you wanted that day.

I already pay for online news.

I subscribe to www.stratfor.com and I get my foreign policy intelligence from it.

So, I think it will only be a matter of time before people other people start doing it for certain sources.