At the end of a failed 15-year experiment in giving away its product, the press (newspapers and magazines) has begun to renounce free. It's slow in starting, because of the inertia of this decade and a half, but the New York Times announced recently that it would begin charging for its Website, and others are sure to follow. (In fact, this was a huge game of chicken, where U.S. newspapers wanted to start charging for their content, but none wanted to be the first to take the leap.) But payment for Websites alone won't be enough to change newspapers' and magazines' bottom lines from red to black. Apple's tablet, however, will.

The end of free

It's time for free to end. Newspapers and magazines made the mistake, in the early days of the Web, of giving away their content for free, in exchange for revenue from Web advertising. (One could argue that this is not exactly free for users, given the annoyance they have to put up with.) While this may have been viable for a few years, everyone now knows that Web ads simply don't work. In the early days of the Web, people clicked on banner ads because they were new; but they quickly just became a nuisance, and now everyone ignores them.

More ... http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/187623/what_an_apple_table...