Newspaper columnist too dumb to know who pays his bills

A columnist for Long Island’s daily newspaper, Newsday, has quit. Why? The newspaper is putting up a paywall on his website.

Great, not only are there freeloaders outside the newspaper office, they have aiders and abetters inside.

Goodbye, Saul Friedman.

Three other comments.

One, don’t flatter yourself about how many people around the country read you.

Two, if they actually did, whether in hardcopy or on their cities’ newspaper websites, they could ask to have you syndicated by the local paper.

Three, before the Internet, they were reading somebody else because they couldn’t read you anyway.

Now, that said, Newsday is owned by Cablevision, so, there is possible corporatized newspaper greed here. But, not necessarily. Did Friedman ask what operating profit Newsday has, not just overall, but specifically on online operations? (If it has any, when online is priced out separately.)