The Washington Monthly: The end of blogs

Kevin Drum hears that NYT and other papers are wishing to stop giving away content on the web and start charging for access to their sites. He thinks this is the end of political blogging, that the dearth of sources to point to would dry up the fuel of blogs. I have to say I think that's incorrect. Like so many things, online news is out of the bottle. It's too important for people to be able to share, comment, fact-check, disagree and refute.

I don't blame the Times for wanting to monetize their content more, but its not the same as the WSJ, which after all never published for free. The Times doesn't provide data or advanced business knowledge. Bloggers can subscribe to the for-pay version too, but they may not be content to link to a door with a lock on it.