This New England

"Marsh,'' acrylic painting by Robert Thornton, now at the Bert Gallery, in Providence.

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According to James Warren, formerly a big journalist at the Chicago Tribune, a whole bunch of newspaper poohbahs are meeting today outside of Chicago to discuss, among other things, charging for access to papers' Web sites. They are about 12 years too late, but I suspect things will move pretty fast in that direction this year.

Interestingly, this item appears on The Atlantic Monthly's Web site. The Atlantic, of course, was long based in Boston but recently was kidnapped to Washington. It's a glorious legacy of 19th Century (and Boston Brahmin) literary journalism. Now they're breaking a new/old media story that certainly would have bemused William Dean Howells, the Atlantic's famous editor way back when.

In other potentially good news for print, or at least bad news for some huge new-media companies, the Espresso technology for printing books on demand (at bookstores) has been launched. my colleague Froma Harrop reports to me. Could threaten Kindle, behemoth Amazon's electronic book device.

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/james_warren/

 Tags  Bert Gallery charging for Web access James Warren Robert Thornton The Atlantic Monthly William Dean Howells

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