Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 3:53 PM by Gene

Prompted by the executive truth-teller of the PAPER OF RE-CORD the news biz has assumed a bold fury demanding it be charged for its dubious wares. The Wall Street Journals can charge, can't they? Yes, and they also send out freebies on G000,000,000GLE -- and don't forget the Salon.com suggestion. No, what could happen is a game of musical chairs: As more papers go pay they get fewer hits; meantime the big papers that stay free get more hits -- and more advertising. Only a few newspaper Web sites will land on a chair. Who wants a chair?

And no, because enough news geniuses have been drummed out of the biz already, and because it engages in spin and sell more than ever, and because subscription revenues may not make up for the ad revenues lost from hits, and because news Web sites will only be able to charge so much, the end product will NOT get better.

And Romy points us to this celebrity-tattle colyumnist and his brilliant suggestion:

This company should charge online visitors a small fee, maybe $5 a month, for our content - which is copyrighted, then sue the pants off anyone stealing it.

Should Google "pick up" (steal) our stuff, if we successfully sued them for $1 billion, two good things happen: 1) Our money problems are solved; 2) everyone else will stop stealing our content.

And a third good thing will happen: No one will read preening celebrity-tattle colyumnists.

I know some say that you can't put toothpaste back in the tube, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

And when you're through, tattler, there'll be no toothpaste or tubes.