I just put this up on the NING, but I wanted to add a couple more talking heads to the Bill Gates conversation tonight - but obviously no big deal if you don't get a chance to read it in the next few hours. This was a sidebar on bigger article in the Detroit News on No Child Left Behind. Obviously, some of the article focuses on Michigan-specific issues, but it's worth a read for everyone.
The Detroit News tends to lead toward the right, and between that and its often subpar quality, I've never spent much time with it, but it is one of the two major newspapers [barely] surviving in Michigan (the other being The Detroit Free Press). My dad reads four+ newspapers a day, and remains a loyal subscriber, even though he probably gets more out of the usually higher quality journalism of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The Detroit newspapers can't even afford to be printed dailies anymore, so I suppose they need all the support they can get.
My initial response to the nytimes.com changes was to be bummed, but I do think that its fair. I mean, I haven't paid for a print subscription in years, in lieu of using the online services . . . and I know many others do the same. Allegedly they'll be offering a university discount soon, and right now it's only $0.99 a week (a special offer). In college, my roommates and I split the student-discounted price for the printed version, and it was very reasonable. So I guess either the funding structure of newspapers needs to be changed radically, or we all need to start paying a little more to support our newspapers.
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