Earlier quoted context omitted.
Newspapers are dying because they are staffed to heavily, not because people don't pay. Now look at smaller publications such as Gawker, hyper local news. They are doing just fine. Wired sold almost as many iPad versions (75.000 at 5USD a pop) as they did paper version since they launched it. Thats excluding advertising. Clearly there is a market for news. It's just not going to be of the NYT kind.
Yeah, good journalism costs money. To have a staff of correspondents reporting around the world isn't cheap. But I think it's worth it. I think in order for newspapers to survive, people have to learn that they need to pay. Advertising alone isn't going to pay the bills. I personally think that charging people money for things on the internet isn't such a crazy idea. ;-)
The Wall Street Journal and the Economist successfully taught their readers this lesson.