Kenneth Chang

I don’t know how people expect me to respond when they say they would love to read my column, but the @nytimes has a fire wall and wants them to subscribe. I will never tell you what to do with your money. But, journalism is a profession like any other. Do you work for free?

Maybe it's the payment models that are outdated. Maybe in a massive information age, people don't want to pay a giant corporation when they just want to pay the journalist. Maybe people should be able to easily pay 1 cent per view.

Too true, I grasp the idea of media companies having to bring in revenue but I don't want to subscribe just to read one article. Pay per view would be a great option.

Micropayments are a terrible idea. Either it'd be unwieldy (enter a password for every article you read) or people (or their children) will inadvertently run up their bill. Think of app charging disputes multiplied by 100. Plus, think what'll happen when bots join the fun.

Only under current implementations. A mobile authentication would work easy and just fine, and not be a pain. Also short password is not unwieldy for several minutes of read time, one you can type in 2.5 seconds. Perfectly doable.

I’ll believe it when I see someone implement it with a viable biz model. I don’t see it. It’d be like the old per-minute cell phone bills that everyone hated. But messier and more overhead.

Only with large centralized middlemen. I mean it's either try to innovate or keep going down the death spiral.