Consumers have become used to feasting on internet freebies of everything from music to news, but in the recession, some businesses are thinking twice about giving away their product online.
Among them is the independently-owned newspaper the National Business Review, which has just started charging for some of its news.
Business analyst Nathan Cheeseman is a regular reader of the online version of the NBR, but today his favourite morning click came to nought.
"It's normally the first place I touch to see what's going on after reading the Herald in the morning, but more than half of the articles I clicked on I couldn't actually read."
He is not alone. From today, all readers have to pay for selected stories.
"You can't have a newsroom where you're giving away information," says publisher Barry Colman. "None of it makes sense. It's a crazy model really."
Mr Colman says an online reader generates only 10 percent of the revenue that can be made from a hard copy newspaper reader. He says news organisations around the world are paying the price for a decade of free online news.
"In America, some of the biggest and most important titles are actually bankrupt, or going bankrupt, from the New York Times down," he says. "They're all heavily in debt and they're all slashing and burning in terms of the newsroom, in order to hold costs down, so they're really killing the golden goose."
And Colman says that could have serious repercussions around the world.
"It's quite a crucial role in society that the media does stay powerful and it does stay accurate and it does stay unbiased. If the world were left to bloggers, heaven only knows what would happen."
But the demise of the traditional print media is not something that worries blogger Cameron Slater.
"This is what happens when you're at a tipping point. There's chaos because there's no set way on moving forward, so someone has to find a way."
So is the NBR's 'pay-to-read' online service the answer?
"I don't think the model will work," he says. "They've tried before. The Herald tried with a subscription service, but bloggers quickly found a way around that - people either pay or they'll find a way round that, or they won't care. I suspect it won't be successful."
Mr Slater agrees society needs a strong media, but says it will be the bloggers who'll increasingly fill that role.
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