Reinventing the news

Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination Scott Karp says:

"Here’s another example. Once upon a time, millions of people downloaded music for free — and illegally — from Napster and other file sharing services. Then iTunes came along and those same millions of people started paying $0.99 to get the songs legally when they could easily still get them free with no real risk of getting caught breaking the law. How completely irrational. I’ve actually gone and purchased most of the songs I downloaded from Napster back in the day. Craziness.

SO, sure I can post a classified for free on Craigslist. And most people happily do so, completely oblivious to that fact that their actions are putting their local papers out of business. Most newspaper executives probably assume that people will continue to choose free Craigslist over paid listings in their paper or on their website because that is the “rational” thing for those people to do.

But I wonder what would happen if newspapers introduced a new factor into the equation: the civic benefit of supporting local journalism."

I am not so idealistic about man behavior, at least about man's general behavior ( I do not doubt there are still a few idealists).
The reason why many download from iTunes and pay for it, is that with 0.99 you avoid the hassle to use a P2P software.
Most of the young people still do and do not pay iTunes.
Most of the people my age do...
And I really doubt that people would prefer to pay to put an ad on a newspaper where they have to pay to have fewer chances to be seen...
The future will tell if humans are still humans in spite of...