Newspapers need an antitrust exemption so they can charge us all for content

Two major newspapers — the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times — charge readers tiered fees to view their online journalism. The rest of the industry has decided there’s more money to be made in charging advertisers for the larger audiences that free content attracts than in selling online subscriptions.

That’s wrong, in my view, but it’s hard to argue with as long as some major newspapers are giving their online journalism away; until they stop, nobody can risk charging for theirs. That’s where the antitrust exemption would come in: It would allow all U.S. newspaper companies — and others in the English-speaking world, as well as popular broadcast-based sites such as CNN.com — to sit down and negotiate an agreement on how to scale prices and, then, to begin imposing them simultaneously.