You are right. It takes someone a lot of time, fact checking, and production to put out what is actually the “news”, and not a bunch of noisy people talking their heads off.

That’s why sooner or later, people will pay just a little bit for information they can trust. They will realize it in different areas of interest that matter the most to them, but chances are, we already cover it…politics, entertainment, local news, sports, business, etc.

That’s when people will stop saying I’m crazy about putting walls up to block the aggregators that have made the internet much of what it is today (for the good, and the bad).

New stuff always starts out whimsical, full of creativity, and is incredibly appealing.

Then they grow up, lose a little lustre, but gain added wisdom and respect for being more than “fun and games”.

I won’t be the only one to block Google with robot.txt red lights, but I hope to be a fly in the ointment that others in the news business will follow — for our industry and for the people seeking trustworthy news sources.

R. Murdoch

(ok – not Rupert Murdoch but someone stating his position on blocking Google from indexing his sites).

More on the issue at the NYTimes…http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/doing-the-math-on-news-corps-threatened-google-block/