The debate over the future of how content will be accessed is interesting in how individuals choose to frame their arguements. One side seems to suggest that ultimately content and features will be free because the value gleaned from offering free services will result in profit from other areas. On the other side, some are once again skeptical of technology's ability to reduce goods and services so much that they become cheap and/or free to the consumer. I think ultimately content will be provided in a way that sits in the middle of these two philosophies.
The idea of offering goods and services for near free a price while making money off of another good or service is genius. It allows for a company to spread their brand through movement of goods and services in a flexible way that is beneficial to the consumer. The most important thing however if company do choose to take this route is that they must have a some product that is superior enough that consumers are willing to but it and that product must be bought repeatable buy consumers. Such a model would not work for newspapers or other written digital content providers because newspapers do not have another good or service to offer that consumers view as superior. In the age of increasingly free and cheap technology this does not bode well.
On the other hand, companies that offer only one service but a variety of options as well as superior content within that service could ultimately survive in such a marketplace. For example, Gladwell pointed to the Wall Street Journal and cable television as services that offer one basic good but have either superior content or a variety of options. However, newspapers have other options that many deem superior so this model will most likely not work out as well.
Ultimately, newspapers will have to find what platform helps them regain their superiority or they will no longer exist in their current format.
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