In recent months not only Democrats but many other Americans as well have become increasingly dismayed by the growing irrationality and even downright delusional thinking that appears to be taking hold among many conservatives and Republicans.
The most recent evidence of this trend was a September poll of New Jersey voters that not only showed 33% of self-described conservatives accepting the notion that Obama was not born in the United States but 18% also agreeing with the statement that he is “the Anti-Christ.” The appearance of this view in a northern industrial state like New Jersey indicates that these kinds of beliefs can no longer be dismissed as geographic peculiarities of rural areas or the South rather than as a significant component of modern American conservatism.
Despite the concern, however, there has actually been little serious discussion of how opinion polls might be used to track the growth of genuinely delusional thinking in American politics. It is true that ever since many commentators began using the number of people who accept the “Birther” narrative – that Obama was not actually born in the U.S. – as a shorthand measure of conservative and Republican irrationality there have been similar attempts to demonstrate that an equal number of Democrats believe false “Truther” narratives about the 9/11 attacks. As we will see, however, these discussions have all been based on survey questions that do not accurately distinguish between genuinely delusional beliefs and non-delusional ones and, in the specific case of the “Truther” narratives, also ignore key polling data that does not support the “one extreme equals the other” point of view. As a result, these discussions are useful primarily as ammunition for partisan political debates and not as a basis for serious social analysis.
In contrast, in order to use public opinion polling to seriously attempt to track the growth of delusional thinking in American politics we need to first consider two questions.

1. Can peoples’ responses to survey questions be used to detect psychologically disordered thinking?
2. Can survey questions reliably distinguish between views that are so irrational as to be genuinely “delusional” in a clinical sense and those that are merely extreme or implausible?

The answer to the first question is actually not difficult to determine. In psychology there are a number of “self-report” questionnaires that use people’s response to written questions to gauge characteristics like paranoia, hypochondria and other psychological disorders. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), for example, is widely used and – although far, far from perfect – has been found to be sufficiently predictive for use in a variety of screening and assessment settings.
The key to answering the second question, on the other hand, is to carefully focus attention on beliefs that are genuinely “delusional” — a term which is defined as “a rigid system of beliefs with which a person is preoccupied and to which the person firmly holds, despite the logical absurdity of the beliefs and a lack of supporting evidence”
The current version of the DSM-IV — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines a Delusional Disorder as follows:

“A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.”

In diagnosing a delusional disorder there are three generally used criteria:

•certainty (held with absolute conviction)
•incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
•impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

Obviously there is often not 100% agreement among clinicians in diagnosing a particular delusional disorder, but there is generally a commanding consensus.
With this framework in mind, let’s examine both the “Birther” and the “Truther” narratives:

Read more…

(This is the first section of a three part TDS Strategy Memo that will appear this week. A PDF version of the complete Memo is available here)
Three of the critical mistakes that led to the setbacks in the campaign for health care reform this summer actually preceded the launch of the health care campaign itself and were not the direct result of the specific legislative and political strategies the administration employed. They were rooted in decisions made in the first month or two after Obama took office.
They were:

1. A failure to create a clearly defined “core” message expressing Obama’s basic agenda and general philosophy of government.
2. A failure to immediately begin organizing an effective mass mobilization for that agenda.
3. A failure to begin building ongoing social and cultural community institutions to support that agenda.

There were understandable reasons why these failures of strategy occurred and why they were in significant measure unavoidable – Obama took office in the most chaotic economic circumstances of any president since the Great Depression. The point is not to assign blame but rather to accurately identify the critical tasks that have still not been accomplished and to develop a strategy for achieving them
Introduction
On inauguration day, Obama began his term amid the most dramatic expression of grass roots enthusiasm for a president in living memory – an unprecedented groundswell of support not just from African-Americans but from an extremely broad coalition of the young, the urban, the educated and other groups. The masses of people who traveled to Washington on January 20th or who gathered in other places across the country to celebrate Obama’s inauguration reflected a popular energy and degree of identification with a political figure and a political campaign that had not been previously exhibited since the Roosevelt era.
Within a short time, however, the widely shared feeling that the Obama campaign had not just been a standard political campaign but rather the dramatic beginning of a dynamic mass social movement began to sharply decline. By the time the April 15th “tea parties” rolled around there was barely any sign of spontaneous and energetic grass roots activity among Democrats – there was no nationwide outpouring of local community social activities like “support Obama” rock concerts, street parties, theme evenings at restaurants and clubs or special events to draw people together on an ongoing informal basis. There was no wide viral promotion of new post-election symbols like buttons, tea shirts or bumper stickers carrying forward the “Yes We Can” spirit and linking it to an emerging social movement organized around an agenda for change. There were no tables at shopping centers, people handing out leaflets on street corners or new post-election pro-Obama signs on lawns or lampposts or bulletin boards.
As long time grass-roots organizer Marshall Gans and Peter Drier noted in a Washington post op-ed:

Once in office, the president moved quickly, announcing one ambitious legislative objective after another. But instead of launching a parallel strategy to mobilize supporters, most progressive organizations and Organizing for America — the group created to organize Obama’s former campaign volunteers — failed to keep up… Organizing for America, for example, encouraged Obama’s supporters to work on local community service projects, such as helping homeless shelters and tutoring children. That’s fine, but it’s not the way to pass reform legislation…
Meanwhile, as the president’s agenda emerged, his former campaign volunteers and the advocacy groups turned to politics as usual: the insider tactics of e-mails, phone calls and meetings with members of Congress. Some groups — hoping to go toe-to-toe with the well-funded business-backed opposition — launched expensive TV and radio ad campaigns in key states to pressure conservative Democrats. Lobbying and advertising are necessary, but they have never been sufficient to defeat powerful corporate interests.

The DNC did send out letters. Organizing for America did invite its members to meet in small groups and gatherings and reminded the people on its e-mail lists to visit the OFA website. But the energy and scale of these efforts were deliberately low-key. The DNC letters were in essence standard fundraising appeals and the OFA events were quite specifically designed as “insider” activities for loyal supporters and not as energetic outreach to the general public.
The conservative opposition to Obama’s agenda, on the other hand, created a unique public event in the April 15th Tea Parties, developed a new nationwide set of internet-based social networks and widely popularized a broad ideological framework and perspective with which to attack the entire Obama agenda and administration – the notion that the individual elements of the Obama agenda were actually part of a general movement toward “a government takeover ”, “socialism” or “fascism” and represented an aggressive attack on traditional American values and institutions.
Democrats responded to this threat with an uncoordinated mixture of sputtering outrage, bemused ridicule and point by point refutation of more specific accusations. The charge of “socialism” seemed so absurd that a thoughtful attempt to refute it seemed unnecessary. There was no serious national communications strategy devised to clearly answer the simple but vital question “OK, if the Democratic agenda is not socialism or “government takeover” then exactly what is it?”
This underlying Democratic weakness at the levels of both communications strategy and grass roots organizing led directly to the near-total breakdown during August. The opponents of health care reform were mobilized, organized, armed with basic talking points and backed by professional communications and PR firms. Grass-roots Democrats were looking around in vain for someone to offer leadership and direction.
By late in the third week of August the Democrats had cobbled together a sufficient response to meet the conservative offensive and slow the media narrative of massive public opposition to Democratic plans. But the substantial slide in Obama’s job approval left the campaign for health care reform substantially weaker than it had been in the spring.
At this point, the urgent need is not only for short-term organizing to regain the initiative on health care reform but also for longer range efforts to build a nationwide movement that that revives the “Yes We Can” spirit of Jan 20th and transforms it into a sustained and active social movement to support the overall Democratic agenda. To do this Dems need to do three things.

1. Develop one simple, standardized “core” message that clearly defines the basic goals—as well as the limits — of Obama’s agenda
2. Develop a deeply committed and highly organized group of volunteers specifically dedicated to advocating that core message in meetings and discussions wherever they occur.
3. Develop local activities that can mature into enduring local community social and cultural institutions – institutions that can support a renewed “Yes We Can” movement and allow it to grow.

Read more…

It was not only Democrats but a wide spectrum of Americans who were deeply appalled and offended by the demagogic Republican attacks on Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren today. A New York Times editorial well expressed the sincere outrage many Americans felt:

The American right has directed many silly and offensive attacks at President Obama. But so far nothing compares with the news that right-wing demagogues on talk radio and the Web, along with Republican Party officials, are trying to stop children from hearing the president urge them to stay in school — because, they say, that is socialist propaganda.
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise after a summer in which town hall meetings on health care have been turned into mindless shouting matches, where protesters parade guns and are cheered on by elected officials… Still, it was startling to read in Friday’s Times about the overheated and bizarre response to Mr. Obama’s [planned speech]…
The White House says Mr. Obama will talk about the importance of education — hardly, we hope, a controversial topic. But the article said that in a growing number of school districts, especially in Texas, parents, talk-show hosts and some Republican officials are demanding that schools either refuse to show it or allow parents to keep their children home. The common refrain is that Mr. Obama will offer a socialist message — although nobody said what they meant by that…
There is, of course, nothing socialist in any of Mr. Obama’s policies, as anyone with a passing knowledge of socialism and its evil history knows.

Unfortunately, this was not the only reaction among the “mainstream” media. Many print and TV commentators took a far more timid approach. Consider, for example, the editorial in the Washington Post:

Education, not politics, should drive the president’s pitch to students on Tuesday.
…One would think that this message about the importance of education — by a president making it a priority — would be universally welcomed. Instead, the planned speech has drawn denunciations from conservatives. School districts around the country are refusing to air the broadcast, and some parents are even threatening to keep their children out of school that day…Particularly egregious have been comments, like those of the Florida Republican Party, accusing the president of wanting to spread a socialist agenda, at taxpayer expense. Who knew that doing homework and setting goals was part of “The Communist Manifesto”?
But, Democrats aren’t exactly blameless, either. They were the ones who criticized President George H.W. Bush for making a similar address in 1991. They accused Republicans of using children as political pawns and questioned the use of federal dollars to stage the event…It also was a goof for education officials to suggest as part of the original menu for classroom activities that elementary students write letters to themselves “about what they can do to help the president.” That has been changed in the wake of the controversy to writing letters “about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”
A complete list of resources and suggested lesson plans appears on the Education Department’s Web site, and there is nothing objectionable thereof. Moreover, the White House’s promise to post the full text of the speech online Monday should be further reassurance that the president’s interests are educational, not political.

What in God’s name is this editorial actually implying — that Obama really needed to be warned by the Washington Post editorial writers that “education, not politics, should drive [Obama’s] pitch to students on Tuesday” – because otherwise he would give a campaign speech? Or that Democrats are equally guilty of this kind of behavior — although they never called on a single school district to boycott Bush’s 1991 speech or told a single Democratic parent to keep their children home that day?
Of course, the editorial does not explicitly say either of these things. Quite the contrary, it is a particularly elegant example of a widespread modern genre of commentary that attempts to hem and haw so acrobatically that it says nothing substantial at all — and most important of all, avoids expressing any genuine and categorical moral outrage.
The purpose of this exercise is, of course, to avoid offending the powerful thunder gods of Fox News and the vocal foot-soldiers of the conservative right. At least half of the editorial writers who wrote equivocal, “on the one hand, on the other hand” commentaries about the Republican attacks on Obama’s address were actually as offended as most Americans and privately agreed with the New York Times editorial but were unwilling to “go out on a limb” with their audience by expressing the moral outrage they actually felt.
Commentators weren’t always this timid. In the 50’s when major American papers began to challenge Joe McCarthy, they had the courage of their convictions.

The Evening Star of Washington It was a bad day for everyone who resents and detests the bully boy tactics which Senator McCarthy so often employees…
The New York World Telegram: Bamboozling, bludgeoning, distorting way…
St. Louis Post Dispatch: Unscrupulous, McCarthy bullying.
The New York Times: The unwarranted interference of a demagogue — a domestic Munich…
The Herald Tribune of New York: McCarthyism involves assaults on basic Republican concepts…

In a TV broadcast that was widely viewed as dealing a major blow to McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow summed up the challenge:

We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men…
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.

50 years later those words are still taught in J-schools and honored as one of the proudest moments in American journalism. In contrast, editorials that offered “on the one-hand, on the other hand” equivocations are now forgotten.
Today the time has come for all American journalists to face their responsibility – as Murrow said “to stand up for America’s heritage and history”. It is time for mainstream journalists to stop being intimidated by the bullies at Fox News, talk radio and the Republican Party. It is time for them to stand up for what they know is the truth – to show whether or not they are “descended from fearful men”

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s debatable whether the latest incarnation of Mike Huckabee represents a turn to the dark side by the genial and amusing 2008 presidential candidate that a lot of Democrats admired, or a revelation of what the man has always really been.
But ever since he became a radio and TV gabber, the Bad Huck has taken over. Aside from his early charges that Barack Obama’s agenda was aimed at creating a Union of American Socialist Republics, and his more recent arguments for a displacement of Palestinians to a homeland somewhere outside Palestine, Huck really went over the brink today, as reported by HuffPo’s Sam Stein:

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show on Friday that, under President Obama’s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” during his last year of life.
“[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them,” said Huckabee. “Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.”

This despicable rant should disqualify Mike Huckabee from any further liberal sympathy, no matter how much he tries to joke or rock-n-roll his way back into mainstream acceptability.

I nearly didn’t bother to read Jonathan Martin’s Politico article today about Rep. Allen Boyd’s reflections on the health care reform protesters he’s encountered at town hall meetings in his district during the August recess. Entitled “A Blue Dog’s Lament,” and subtitled “‘People Are Scared,'” it looked like yet another maddening snail’s-eye-view piece suggesting that the protesters represent John Q. Public and portend the righteous doom of health care reform. I also figured Boyd might well be one of those Democrats opposed to health care reform for less than principled reasons, who’s using the protests as an excuse to do what he’s decided to do anyway.
But the piece is actually worth reading. Martin–and for that matter, Boyd–do seem to understand that the protesters represent a minority of voters, even in Boyd’s conservative Florida district, who probably voted against Barack Obama last year and are simply and logically extending their opposition to his agenda into the opportunity to make some noise about it. And it’s interesting that the protesters seem as upset about TARP as they are about their perceptions of health care reform.
As for Boyd, he’s making it clear at these meetings that he’s going to vote against the House version of health reform. But he appears open to what might well come out of a House-Senate conference committee, and is going out of his way to correct misperceptions of the various bills, and also to remind protesters that many of them already depend on government for health insurance.
The irony that comes through in this account is that many of the protesters are being manipulated by reform opponents even as they express fear of manipulation by Big Government:

“They want to take over our life,” insisted Elaine Thompson just minutes before she shoved a stack of signed pink slips and a copy of the Constitution in Boyd’s hands.
Wearing a shirt that read “Concerned American Patriots” on the front and “Wake Up America” on the back, Thompson, of Marianna, said the White House was being run using “Chicago terrorism.”
“Saul Salinsky is their mentor,” she replied when asked to explain what she meant, misstating the name of leftist community organizer Saul Alinsky, who is often cited by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. “They are controlling what’s happening in this country.”
After his summer recess, Allen Boyd may disagree.

Hopefully, most TDS readers saw at least a news clip or two of President Obama’s successful town hall meeting in Montana on Friday. For those who didn’t, the next best thing is to read Mike Lupica’s column in today’s Daily News. Lupica leads with the view of a woman who watched the town hall in an airplane hangar in Belgrade, Montana:

“Yes, there were a few protesters en route. But the Montanans who were excited to hear the President far outnumbered the fringe groups.”…Then she said this about Obama: “He was smart, fair, funny.”

Lupica adds,

…This wasn’t an occasion when people with legitimate concerns and legitimate points to make were overwhelmed by the wing nuts and screamers who take their marching orders from right-wing radio and television and the Internet…Those idiots come to these town hall meetings more to be seen than heard, and think creating chaos makes them great Americans.

Lupica, known to most of his readers as a tell-it-straight sports writer, doesn’t mince words:

Those people have been convinced by the current culture that we are dying to hear from them, and the louder the better. People who think that all they need to star in their own reality series is a couple of TV crews…We hear that all of this is democracy in action. It’s not. It’s boom-box democracy, people thinking that if they somehow make enough noise on this subject, they can make Obama into a one-term President…The most violent opposition isn’t directed at his ideas about health care reform. It is directed at him. It is about him. They couldn’t make enough of a majority to beat the Harvard-educated black guy out of the White House, so they will beat him on an issue where they see him as being most vulnerable.
…With that kind of zealotry, screaming about government programs as if Medicare isn’t one. It is why so many of them, all these wild-eyed red faces in the crowd, look completely certifiable, screaming about how Obama wants to kill Grandma, as if he’s suddenly turned into Jack Kevorkian.
…They couldn’t win the fight last November, when he laid out John McCain and Palin and a whole party with one election, so they try to do it now, with lies and rather amazing distortions. They want everybody to believe that if Obama gets his way, he’ll eventually be in charge of insurance and doctors and whether you use CVS or Duane Reade. He’s a Socialist selling socialized medicine. He’ll kill Grandma. Come on. The notion that this is all honest dissent is just one more lie.
Even in Montana, the Swift Boaters who would line up against any health care plan endorsed by Barack Obama ran one television ad 115 times over a day and a half before the President arrived.

The President himself, quoted by Lupica, summed it up well:

“Every time we are in sight of health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they’ve got,” the President said outside Bozeman. “They use their influence and run their ads. They use their political allies to scare the American people.”

Yes, we know, some protestors are sincere and fair-minded, even when not well-informed. But the health care swiftboaters being mobilized to preserve the status quo need to be called out, and this morning Mike Lupica did just that. You can watch President Obama’s Saturday town hall meeting on health care reform in Grand Junction, CO on Saturday, on C-SPAN right here.

Andrea Fuller reports at The New York Times blog, ‘The Caucus’ on “tele-town halls,” a creative alternative to allowing town hall meetings on health insurance reform to devolve into shouting matches with shrill reactionaries. Fuller explains:

The conference-call style of town halls is nothing new, nor has its use been restricted to Democrats. But for some lawmakers back in their districts this month to talk about health care, the tele-town hall is shaping up as a refreshing option to forums that make possible confrontations with protesters….
…Thousands of participants can join tele-town halls. Representatives provide call-in numbers and access codes to their constituents through robo-calls, Web sites and newsletters. Members of Congress say the phone sessions are a more convenient way to reach constituents, especially elderly and disabled constituents who might not attend an in-person event.
“You can talk to thousands of people all over the state all at once in a format that allows everyone to be heard,” said Jon Summers, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. “What we’ve seen with other town halls is the dialogue that people are used to isn’t being allowed to occur.”

Fuller reports that Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) has scheduled two tele-town hall meetings for August. Shuler aide Douglas Abrahms said he expects the tele-town halls to “catch on quickly.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who conducted a tele-town hall meeting in July with 30,000 participants (OK, mostly listeners), is setting up another one. “You can talk to thousands of people all over the state all at once in a format that allows everyone to be heard,” explains Reid aide Jon Summers.
The tele-town hall meeting strategy allows progressives to manage the environment in a way that encourages civil discussion of concerns, instead of discordant yelling contests. Predictably, the Republicans are attacking the tele-town halls as anti-democratic, primarily because there is no way to disrupt them. But tele-town hall advocates could respond that the comparison between the live and tele-town hall meetings as educational forums is like the difference between ‘shock jock’ radio and NPR.
Some Democratic members of congress may be able to handle the live town hall meetings to their advantage, assuming they can have some control over the environment, by demonstrating their maturity and sobriety in comparison to the screaming GOP shills. And it may be that the astroturfers’ protests will peak too soon, or even better, start to turn off increasing numbers of people. For many Dems, however, the tele-town hall meeting approach is a creative alternative to the Republicans’ obstruction campaign.

The current debate between Democrats and Republicans as to whether the teabag/health care reform protests are spontaneous “grass roots” events or totally artificial creations of “Astroturf” lobbying firms is now settling down into a familiar pattern of dueling partisan op-ed page commentaries, sound-bites and press releases. It is therefore an opportune moment to consider a somewhat more nuanced version of this question — exactly how are the local protesters and the lobbying firms really related.
On the one hand, since the April 15th Tea Parties it has been obvious that there is indeed a decentralized network of thousands of local conservative activists distributed across several hundred cities around the country. The 300,000 people that Nate Silver estimated participated in Tea Party events on April 15th are a small percentage of the nation’s total population, but they are a politically significant force because of their wide local distribution. After April 15th there was never any real doubt that these local activists would be ready and willing to mobilize around any of a number of conservative political causes.
Only a minority of these activists are directly paid by lobbying firms or are long-term active volunteers in conservative organizations or the Republican Party. In this very specific and limited sense, many individual protesters can indeed be called “authentic” rather than artificial.
But to properly judge the significance of the teabag/anti-health care protesters of today, it is more instructive to compare them with the student protest movement of the 1960’s. There are actually certain major similarities – and one profound difference.
Let’s look at the student protest movement first:

• On the broadest level the “student movement” of the 1960’s was united by opposition to the war in Vietnam but beyond that it was a kaleidoscopic mixture of outlooks, lifestyles and political perspectives. The student movement included straight traditional liberal “politicos”, extreme radicals and hippy-counterculture protesters whose outlook ranged from highly political to largely non-political. The issues that motivated the participants in the student movement — aside from Vietnam — included civil rights, the environment, legalization of drugs, control over the university itself as well as a vast range of other liberal to radical social and political concerns.
• What gave the “student movement” the powerful sense of solidarity and community that it undeniably had was a distinct social and cultural outlook and a sensibility rooted in the environment and culture of the university and the satellite culture of bookstores, coffee houses, music venues, co-op’s and so on that operated around it. There was a profound sense of shared cultural identity as students, youth and rebels against the dominant culture – a clear perception of “us versus “them”
• The student movement and culture created its own information channels – underground newspapers, alternative magazines and “comix” as well as a universally shared, deeply political music – both folk and rock — and an intense appreciation of the few kindred spirits like the Smothers Brothers who existed in the mainstream media.
• The student movement faced constant and deep divisions over tactics – divisions that evolved over the decade – first between peaceful demonstrations versus sit-ins and then between disruptive protests and more radical actions like “shutting down” the universities and the weathermen’s “days of rage”

In these four particular respects, the current teabag/health care protesters do indeed exhibit certain distinct similarities.

Read more…

When it comes to the newspaper business, nothing draws attention faster than a discussion of free versus paid content. Journalism is full of those who believe that newspapers made a fatal mistake when they failed to demand a subscription from their readers the day they launched their first websites. But even if that were the case, their critics reply, after a decade of serving up free content, there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
Rupert Murdoch, though, is willing to try.
On an earnings call last week, the News Corp mogul told reporters and analysts:

We intend to charge for our news websites. The Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ.com is the world’s most successful paid news site and we will be using our profitable experience there and the resulting unique skills throughout News Corp to increase our revenues from all our content.

The new business model, he said, would be put in place over the course of the next fiscal year.
That announcement has spurned no small amount of debate already, but missing from much of the discussion is analysis of what Murdoch’s decision will look like in practice.
The Wall Street Journal has found a successful model for charging for subscriptions online. But its readership is fairly unique — made up of people who can afford to pay a premium for important information and then in turn derive value from that information in their own work. On top of that, online editors at WSJ.com make certain stories available to the entirety of the Internet for free, everyday.
Even the Wall Street Journal can’t escape the dominant business of the Internet — the link economy.
That fact makes it even less likely that an institution like the New York Post will be able to put the entirety of its content behind a paywall. There are simply too many other options for a reader who is willing to look for the same news for free somewhere else. Instead of setting up their own paywalls, Murdoch’s competitors are likely to advertise the fact that their content is completely open. And even if the New York Daily News were to start demanding a subscription fee as well, sites like Gawker — which have found a way to thrive using advertising dollars — will happily continue to churn out tabloid content for all its readers without ever asking them to pay a dime.
That’s the dilemma facing almost any news organization that tries to demand its readers pay for the privilege of accessing its website. There will always be competitors capable of producing similar news, who are willing to publish it for free. And many of them won’t be bloggers or news aggreagators. They’ll be traditional journalists who are willing to innovate.
Vivian Schiller is a former head of nytimes.com and the current CEO of National Public Radio. She ended the Time’s famous experiment with charging a premium for its op-ed page and has since overseen a redesign of NPR.com. She says that she is a “staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online.” She is working to position NPR to accept the web traffic of those who try.
Chris Ahearn — the president for media at Reuters — is another believer in free content. He has written that:

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Murdoch says that News Corp will vigorously defend its copyright against those who would excerpt and link to its content, but Ahearn writes that Reuters believes that kind of attention is fair use and welcomes the traffic it drives.
We shouldn’t write off this experiment before it starts, however.
No one has announced that the News Corps subscription service will function just like that of the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch only said that his company will begin to charge for its web content, and we don’t know the form it will take. Even if News Corp can’t escape the link economy, there is an opportunity for the company to offer different kinds of premium content through all of its online properties.
And this is an experiment whose time has come.
Fred Wilson — a venture capitalist who spends a lot of time thinking about the future of news — wrote that he welcomed Murdoch’s announcement.

We can talk until we are blue in the face about whether people will pay for news or not. Talk is cheap. Actions are not. So I’m eager to see the experiments begin.

Until someone actually launches a serious effort to make paid content work across a network, the arguments about the merits of free media are never going to end. This is a time for innovation in journalism, and News Corps will certainly devote smart people and serious resources to making this effort a success.
That success just might not look like what Rupert Murdoch expects.