I just saw an interesting article on the New York times about Qmail that I wanted to link to but I have no idea how long that link is going to be current.
My suggestion is that newspapers guarantee that their articles won't go away or be moved to another URL with the intention that people will link to them. Then they can rent the advertising space on those pages to the highest bidder.
In this way everyone wins. Information doesn't disapear and newspapers can aim to write killer articles that many people will want to link to and provide them with continuous revenue for years to come.
They should of course provide statistics about the number of links to the page and the number of page views over time so that advertisers and potential advertisers can see the value of a page.
Think of it like renting the hordings near a famous landmark. I think that is way better than charging the viewers to become members of the newspaper's pay per view system and moving pages to a pay for view area after a short time.
They might even want to start an affiliates program so if my blog gives them the highest number of hits they might want to reward me.
Posted by stuartcw at September 8, 2003 04:02 PM