Stanford Professor Joel Brinkley offers this idea to save newspapers:

The newspaper industry should ask the Justice Department for an antitrust exemption that would allow publishers to collaborate on a decision to begin charging for their Web sites. No paper would have to charge, and each paper could determine its own price. But if most papers in a region — San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, for example — began charging for Web access at more or less the same time, many readers would likely subscribe.”

Here’s a link to his entire op-ed. Brinkley became a visiting professor in Stanford’s Department of Communications in 2006 after a 23-year career with The New York Times. He’s a Pulitzer winner and the son of the late TV anchor David Brinkley.