"You are hard-pressed to find a media company that's not absolutely ogling subscriptions or some type of paid content, and trying to move there," says Mark Mooradian, vice president and senior analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. Jupiter forecasts the market for paid content will grow to nearly $5.7 billion by 2005 from $1.1 billion in 2001. Those projections, however, include a broad swath of media, including not just news but also adult entertainment, online gaming, education and music.
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Microsoft Corp.'s Slate magazine tried to make readers pay for its news and political commentary back in 1997, but dropped those plans. Editor Michael Kinsley told Slate readers at the time that the publication had "chickened out" on plans to charge for access. Slate resurrected the subscription model in 1998 -- but scrapped it again in February 1999 amid a sharp downturn in the site's traffic.

When you download websites for free, you're downloading communism! Note: There are absolutely no plans to make Shacknews a pay site. Sorry. :(