End of free online news? Strib publisher admires NYT's pay wall

Will the Star Tribune start charging readers to access its online content? It may be in the cards. Mike Klingensmith, the paper's new publisher, told WCCO's Jason DeRusha yesterday that he admired the New York Times for announcing that most of its online content would soon go behind a pay wall, and predicted other news organizations would follow suit.

"I think it's a great business decision. I think it was inevitable. I think the fact they decided to go this way will hasten others to look at the same thing,"
Klingensmith told DeRusha. "People have always been willing to pay for news historically, be it magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, business publications."

The Strib already charges readers for access to some of its Vikings coverage. Klingensmith said he wasn't ready to go that route -- yet -- with the whole Strib news product. But he predicted that, a year from now, the online landscape for news, including the Strib, "is going to look a little different than it looks today."

• We have more about Klingensmith here.