Charging for online

A Rhode Island newspaper is charging for online content, but not in any way that's familiar to those who have seen different pricing models tried out for Internet news.

The paper will charge $100 on top of the print subscription to get the Web site, and $200 more if someone just wants the Web site.

I don't know much about this paper, but apparently whoever wrote the article (see link above) is, and they're saying this isn't the type of paper that has good enough content to charge like that.

I guess we'll see, but the move is a gutsy choice. Whether a large, viable print/Web news source could do that is another question, especially since we're about 10-15 years past the time where any attempt to charge for online content may have been snuck through. There have been a lot of moves lately, though, to start charging, so the industry will have to keep an eye on this model as well as the more popular cheap subscription and micropayment models.