It's important to be clear about two facts in this discussion:
1. Free newspapers are not all "shoppers." Some newspapers that happen to be free contain some very fine journalism. I've worked at several free papers (most now defunct for reasons only partly related to business), and most journalism outlets in any medium would be very lucky to have newsrooms filled with the kind of smart, tough, prolific journalists I knew there.
2. Newspapers are primarily businesses, and they always have been. When I moved from free weeklies to a paid daily, I was astonished at how many reporters and editors ignored this reality. The sooner people on the news side accept this, the sooner we all will be able to view the future of the industry clearly and factually -- instead of through the idealistically distorted lens of a self-perpetuated fiction about what a newspaper is.
