As much as I have been encouraged by the democratization of news the internet has brought about — anyone can report on anything at anytime — I believe in paid content. You get what you pay for. If you want your news for free, you’re going to get news of little or no monetary value produced by just anyone at anytime. Free news is good news, but news with a monetary value is better news. What I have said a few times during the past year as I was involved in attempts to create paid online news sites — and even been quoted a couple times saying it — is that the great myth of this age of journalism is that newspapers’ free online content is actually free. It’s not; it’s subsidized.

While we here at America’s Fish will be the first among those who have made living from them to admit that newspapers have been at times slow to innovate and frustratingly tepid when it comes to covering big issues like politics and the environment, in this culture of job losses and fear of more job losses for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives to champion job losses as partly his doing is just stupid.

To quote: “MediaNews Group Inc. late Thursday insisted it is in compliance with all its debt covenants, as it reacted to a credit downgrade by Moody’s Investors Services to a rating suggesting “a substantial risk” of default.” And this is the guy who’s driving us out of business!