Newsweek delivers an interesting lesson in media economics via a story on Newport Daily News (R.I.). Here’s a paper that constructed a huge pay wall for its online content in hopes of stopping its freefall. That’s basically what Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi advocated in a recent, controversial piece in American Journalism Review.

The newspaper began charging $345 for an online subscription, and the impact has been stark: Discontinue-my-subscription calls stopped; newsstand sales of the paper surged by 200 copies a day for a paper with a daily circ. of 13,000.

Woohoo, good news for the industry???!!!

But hold on—-what do you do if your newspaper has always been free .