As far as he's concerned, we've spent enough time discussing the challenges of paid content online. It's time to make free content models work, says Yahoo! vice president James Pitaro in PaidContent.

He argues that professional and semi-professional content will hold value., that partnerships will make for economically efficient sites, that advertisers will be lured through early-stage discussions on content, and that premium models will be an opportunity.

"As an industry, let’s stop demonizing the free model. Free is not a panacea, but it is a serious alternative and one that cannot be discounted. It is easy to throw in the towel and put up a pay wall and hard to withstand industry pressure and remain free. But in the long run, an investment in free may pay dividends," he writes.

PaidContent.UK and Harris Interactive have released an extensive survey of U.K. online users that suggests there isn't much interest in paying for content now delivered freely.

 In fact, only five per cent seem willing (and would only pay about 10 pounds annually for a subscription), while three-quarters would simply switch brands if one started to charge. No big surprise.

But where the views soften is when the notion emerges of combining a print subscription with the online offering. At that point, many more put up their hands --- one-third would accept the proposition of a free or discounted print edition and an online pay model.

The poll also suggests the significant year-to-year growth of online readership of newspaper sites is slowing and perhaps stalling. That has been the case in the U.S. now for about a year.

An interim survey released today by the Newspaper Audience Data Bank (NADBank) shows continued strong readership for Canadian newspapers.

That's comparably different to the declines in the United States and other countries.

The survey, conducted in January, indicates big-city readership of about three-quarters of the adult market per week.

Online growth of about 10 per cent in the last year has been of significant help to the numbers, but many major markets experienced print readership growth.

The media scholar, Clay Shirky, is suggesting the accountability role of newspaper journalism is threatened. Smaller cities risk losing all but very compliant civic coverage

Newspapers are no longer able to sustain their journalism because advertisers are finding other media reliable and more affordable. We are heading into messy times, with the newspaper declines not being replaced by new media gains in short order, he said.

He told an audience at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard that consumers are becoming the new aggregators of content and audience.

When the U.S. president indicates he's willing to look at any bill that strengthens the economic underpinning of American newspapers, people take notice.

But not praising notice. The Newspaper Association of America today suggested it's not interested in a bailout, and influential media columnist Jack Shafer lays out a very aggressive argument against any bill that would permit newspaper companies to reorganize into non-profits for sake of preservation.

"Remember, the decline of newspapers is multifactorial, and it didn't start yesterday," he notes.

Having said that, Shafer does believe something can be done. Postal subsidies for direct-mail competitors ought not to exist. The government approval of joint operating agreements ought to be repealed. But the levelling of the playing field isn't going to stop any economic transformation --- nor should anything try to stop it, he argues.

"The best thing President Obama can do for the news business is nothing."

The venerable technology essayist and author, Paul Graham, argues in his latest post that publishing was never about selling content --- publishers were selling the medium.

The business of selling information is a narrow one with less revenue than one might think, he suggests. That poses an enormous challenge as publishers look for revenue for information.

"What happens to publishing if you can't sell content? You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for," he writes.

As for what to look for in backing technology, Graham concludes:

"When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser."

While it can be argued Google is already in many forms a media giant, it's not yet moved directly into the content business. Kevin Kelleher, writing for GigaOm, suggests that's only a matter of time --- that Google's interest in partnerships with newsrooms will make it a content behemoth.

He sees Google as a budding benevolent dictator. Newsrooms will take a piece of the revenue, but essentially as an outsourced vendor.

"Google has such an advantage it’s not even a fair fight," he writes. Publishers will have a home inside Google, but have to "kiss their brands goodbye."

About the best the New York Times can say about the U.S. newspaper advertising woes is that the freefall isn't much of a freefall any longer --- the decline is slowing, in other words.

But a decline it remains, and a serious one --- in the 20-per-cent range for the current and foreseeable quarters. If the declines seem less serious year-over-year, it might have something to do with the off-the-cliff numbers late in 2008, making this year's seem less dramatic.

Having said that, some newspaper stocks have started to creep up in value.

The sage voice of the Online Journalism Review's editor weighs in with a guide to the principles of student rights in journalism school. Robert Niles describes eight things j-school students deserve.

Among them:
1. Role models.
2. A mentor.
3. Employment contacts.
4. A sandbox --- or as he calls it, a place to hack.
5. Work experience.
6. Deep knowledge about something other than journalism.
7. Getting your name out there.
8. Passion, not excuses.

There are many skills to instill, too, but that's not the message of Niles' post. He's looking at broader issues.

I would add a few principles to his list:
1. Agnosticism about platforms. This is no time to decry old media or dismiss new media.
2. Entrepreneurial literacy. The work models of the future are more likely to be contractual, project-based and fluctuating than they have been.
3. Generosity. A graduate needs to seed the ground for others.

The rise of social media only extends so far, so far.

A new survey in the United States reinforces the primacy of traditional media as the source of news for Americans.

Television remains the principal information medium (49%), followed by the Internet (15%), radio (13%) and newspapers (10%). Those numbers aren't radically different than other surveys in the last two years.

Television is also the first choice of follow-up stories, ahead of the Internet and newspapers. Social media is a very small prime source of news, registering only about one per cent in the survey by the First Amendment Center.