Here’s a thought for all those debating the micropayment issue. When you get a newspaper from the store or a vending machine, you have to pay. Usually it’s less than $1, depending on the paper and the day of the week. Now, paying less than $1 for something is a pretty small amount. As a matter of fact, you could almost call it a “micro” amount. Let’s face it, people have been making “micropayments” for their newspaper ever since kids stood on the street corner yelling “Extra! Extra!”.

So what’s different now? Why is charing people micropayments on the internet such a hard sell? The only real difference is the method of payment. If there was any way people could drop a couple of quarters in their computer we would not be having this conversation. But since we haven’t figured out how to teleport things yet, the remaining options are using credit cards or iTunes-style gift cards for processing payments.

Advertising is the main source of revenue for newspapers. If you are like me, however, you probably get annoyed by websites with a lot of advertising. I try to avoid sites with a lot of ads. And if I accidentally click on one of them I have an almost instant reflex to automatically close the browser. I also think there’s a lot more people like me out there. And will advertisers keep paying if they don’t see results (i.e. people clicking the ads and buying the products)?

If we keep relying on advertising to pay for journalism we will forever be at the whims of the economy.