Extinction of the free online newspaper???

If anyone else is like me, finding time to eat breakfast in the morning, let alone read the paper each morning, is a wonderful, but seldom experiance. Which is why, when i do have a spare 10 mins or so through out the day i aim to jump online and check up what been happning in the world through on line newspapers. Usually in my case i will log on to The Herald, as with a further 1.1 million people a month. I was startled to read, that this free, everyday experiance for thousands of New Zelanders may come to an end. To charge or not to charge??? Apparently this debate has been going on for a while, ever since the commercial practicality of the internet became the phenomenon it is today. The New York Times announced that come September, it will charge $50 a year for Web access to its op-ed columnists and news archives. However, a week earlier, the Los Angeles Times moved in the reverse direction, removing the $60 annual fee it had been charging for its online entertainment guide to Los Angeles. In the Herald recently an article explained how the internet over the past 10 years has challanged Newspapers as they try to retain the loyalty of not only their readerships but advertisers also. They reiterate that the newspaper still provides the authoriative content, in contrast to the questionable content found on the WWW. APN General manager, says that while viewing news stories will be free, from Septemeber exclusive 'comment or opinion material' will require a subscription access fee of $3 a day or $99 for the year. The much loved Key word search ( for me, anyway) will also change format, so that a payment is needed to access stories more than a week old. He goes on to say that 'people are prepared to pay for print formats, so why would the online format be different?'......... Im not so sure.