News For Sale? Online Journalism Fees May Return

Executives at major news companies from The New York Times Co. and The Associated Press on down are arriving at the consensus that they will simply have to find a way to charge people who read their articles online.

But it's not such a simple sell.

In Denver, after the Rocky Mountain News was shut down, a group of several dozen former staffers joined a new Web site called InDenverTimes. They would cover investigative news, sports, features and the arts. In essence, they intended to create something approximating a newspaper experience, online, without a print equivalent.

An Experiment For $5 Per Month

Excitement built as they were convinced they could make a go of it with less than a fourth of the Rocky's old circulation, at a fraction of the cost. All they needed were 50,000 people willing to pay $5 a month.

Fewer than 3,000 people signed up.

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