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Internet News Can't Sustain Free Model

Could the era of ubiquitous free content be ending? New Yorker media columnist Ken Auletta thinks so. And not just because traditional media companies find themselves desperate for a new source of revenue in the digital age. The author of the recent book "Googled" argues that a strictly ad-supported business model for the media business is beginning to lose credibility.

Auletta has little sympathy for the traditional media companies that continue to blame Google for their own trouble adapting, and his admiration for what the company has accomplished in broadening access to information over its brief history. Auletta warned that the result of the free-information ethos is that quality content that is expensive to produce becomes a "commodity" consumers don't want to pay for.

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