I have no idea if paying for online content has taken enough of a hold to help the newspaper business, but when I take a look at my habits it is interesting how things have changed. Ten years ago I paid for the Boston Globe and (3) magazines. These days my household subscribes to (5) newspapers, (5) magazines and a local online sports content provider (Boston Sports Journal).
In terms of actual printed material, a few of the magazines are actually physically read, but everything else is entirely accessed online. The newspapers are all accessed online. The last holdout was the Sunday Globe, but since most of the content that would have been read on Sunday shows up online a few days before Sunday, it really doesn’t make any sense anymore for us to get a hard copy.
Hopefully the new model works, and not just for the big newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Good journalism is vital, nationally, regionally and locally.