A recent study claimed that news consumers would spend $500 per year for online news. Tell that to New York Newsday.

Placed behind a pay wall last fall, New York Newsday.com only attracted 35 people at $5 per person. The reason for this awful performance, according to Newsday, is that the website's offered for free to "Millions of Cablevision customers in the New York tri-state area and 75 percent of Long Island households, including all Newsday home delivery subscribers, now have exclusive access to newsday.com at no additional charge," Newsday said in a statement reported at Paid Content.

Watching the listed reasons why Newsday got only 35 people in three months is totally funny, and shows to what lengths people will go to protect a dumb idea. All of the points made miss a common fact of Internet life: people pay to be entertained, not informed.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail??blogid=95&entry_id=56104#ixzz0ePyrciUf