A thought on saving the newspaper industry

Here's a thought: There's a widely circulating idea that the only way a lot of newspapers are going to sustain themselves is if they start charging for access to the web site, but if any of the other sites remain free, then it's a suicidal move. In the best case scenario, as you hint at here, the newspapers do all start charging at the same time, but then this has negative knock-on effects that could end up being just as suicidal, from damaging blog-journalism to diminished realized revenue. Either way, it seems like the only way forward is for a big fraction of the major papers to take some kind of coordinated effort. So how about the newspapers look into some kind of confederated subscription model, where being a "member" of one paper gets you access to other ones as well? If you get a membership to the Franklin Park & Stone Zoos, or the Museum of Science, that membership also gets you access to free or reduced admission to other zoos & science museums all over the country, and even internationally. Maybe the newspapers can do something similar, and this could play out in various ways. A membership to the NY Times might be more expensive than others, but would get you into other any other newspaper site in their network, while a cheaper Boston Globe membership might get you access to a handful of NYT articles per month, but not unlimited access there, but maybe it would get you full access to the Patriot Ledger, etc. Yes, this would involve getting a bunch of competing companies to come up with a way to pool & distribute revenue amongst themselves, but it's starting to seem like a situation where they'll either stand together, or hang separately. They have little to lose by trying it.