I won!!!

Well, not really. But -- when I read today about the last of the bastions of pay-for-content news on the Web, the Wall Street Journal, finally giving up and going free -- I couldn't help but feel a sense of vindication: it was in a 'past life' now (ie, well before I became a rabbi), but I still remember clearly how passionately I argued with my colleagues at my old newspaper against the idea that we had to charge for our Web content ("how can we just give it away!?!!). With the cost of distributing content on the Web being effectively free (especially when compared with the cost of delivering piles of black ink printed on dried sheets of wood pulp to the end user) I just thought it was inevitable that the only sustainable source of revenue would end up being advertising. . . . And so it has come to pass.