Another step toward pay newspaper sites?

Steve Brill's company dedicated to helping media companies "monetize" their web sites reportedly has contracts with 506 newspapers and magazines, including 176 daily newspapers. Can the media put the genie back in the bottle concerning getting paid for content? My view is that it must, or the media will disintegrate. I love reading blogs, but I know reporting takes time, money and work. You can't do serious journalism on the cheap. Even this blog, which really is just a collection of links with others doing the reporting, takes quite a bit of time. It takes a lot more to do real reporting, and we as a society need that reporting. Which means we're going to have to pay for it.