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1981 News Report Predicts the Death of Print Newspapers

Thanks for digging that out. Compuserve, Knight Ridder, and Dow Jones News Retrieval were there back then, followed shortly by Prodigy and later AOL. Unfortunately for newspapers, customers got in the habit of paying for access, rather than for content. Even now, people are happy to pay their cable company for access to the internet, but not for the content on it. That said, Dow Jones News Retrieval was charging all along, and eventually went to a $25 per month flat fee, and the primary benefit was getting the WSJ - which is probably one reason they felt they could charge for the WSJ on the internet.