Dept. of mythbusting: Money can indeed be exchanged for goods and services

Is an iTunes for news possible? The cool kids all say no.

They're wrong.

A year ago -- three months ago! -- I would have been the last person to make a case for paid content. But I've been coming around, and not for the reasons you think.

It's not because I think newspapers can ever turn back the clock or put the news genie back in the bottle. They can't. From now on, most content will always cost $0.00.

But not all content will be free, because money is not the only cost consumers must pay to read content. Gathering information -- even free information -- requires time, effort and knowledge: time to find it, effort to determine whether content is reliable, and knowledge of what content does or doesn't exist.

If a product can save its readers enough time, effort or knowledge, they'll pay money for it.

This isn't to say that newspaper Web sites in their current form can save people enough time, effort or knowledge to be worth money.

My point is: the problem here isn't the price.

It's the product.

(photo courtesy Flickr user Roby72)