Now I understand that this idea would be different in that the content of the add would be a counter argument to the article — but wouldn’t that be just a different type of plastic? It would invite manufactured conflict to boost readership. Think John Dvorak’s traffic generating comments on a New York Times scale.

(I just looked up the John Dvorak video from 3 years ago and realized it was posted by you! Ha ha … so you must have thought about this angle.)

My concern over all this is that, in the rush to monetize everything, you will kill the talkback web. Charge to read the articles. Charge to comment on them. Charge to vote on them! Eventually, sending a simple Letter to the Editor will require a Paypal account.

See the short story A Medicine for Melancholy.

My belief is that the solution to the Times financial woes is that they will have to deflate their costs (e.g., worker’s salaries) to reflect the globalization of the news…News is a commodity. Why should someone working for the Times make 10x what someone stringing news in China, India, or Fargo does?

As for the printed form, that’s a format that should carry the full cost–both production and environmentally–to the person who chooses that format.