This blog has documented and discussed the media conundrum over the last year—the fundamental tug and pull of content, how people have learned to consume it in a digital environment and why the traditional media establishment is up against a wall when it comes to monetization. This subject is particularly near to my heart, as I left print publishing due to financial hardships and a growing realization that I needed to re-invent myself in the face of an industry that was slowly dying.

The End of Free is Near
I have always advocated and continue to believe that the problem with media is not that it is being consumed less (quite the contrary), but that consumers have come to expect that content should be consumed freely, delivered directly to their phones and laptops in a timely manner with increasingly high-quality. This expectation—that publishers have nurtured—is purely and simply unsustainable.

It's time for free to end. In many ways, newspapers and magazines dug their own grave in the early days of the Web, by giving away content for free in exchange for revenue from Web advertising. In the beginning, this was exciting and publishers bet that although they weren’t sure how it was going to evolve, that eventually those with the largest traffic would reap huge ad profits. Their optimism was fueled the fact that back then people actually clicked on web-banners; something that has utterly dropped off due to modern browsers ability to block pop-ups and their increasing nuisance all over the web.

Because online advertising has largely failed, we have witnessed a wholesale liquidation of media outlets over the last few years. Further fueled by a tanking economy, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, and newspapers and magazines are cutting back and folding all across the U.S. For example, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shut down in early 2009, used to have more than 200,000 weekday readers, and a half-million Sunday readers. Gourmet magazine had nearly a million monthly readers, as did National Geographic’s Adventure.

At the end of a failed 15-year experiment in giving away its product, the press (newspapers and magazines) has begun to renounce free. It's slow in starting, because of the inertia of this decade and a half, but the New York Times announced recently that it would begin charging for its Website, and others are sure to follow. (In fact, this was a huge game of chicken, where U.S. newspapers wanted to start charging for their content, but none wanted to be the first to take the leap.) But payment for Websites alone won't be enough to change newspapers' and magazines' bottom lines from red to black. Apple's tablet, however, might.

Technology Will Ultimately Save Publishing
Tomorrow, Apple Inc. will introduce its latest consumer electronic, the tablet. That’s not actually the name, but we will soon find out what this device will look, feel and act like, as well as what its name will be and how much it will cost. In this case, like the iPod and the iPhone, Apple’s tablet is not introducing a completely novel idea (MP3 players and cell phones both existed prior to the introduction of those products), but you can guarantee that it will be a game changer.

The tablet follows in the likeness of Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle, but will likely contain a number of added features: users will be able to play games on it, surf the Web, read e-books, and much more. Whatever functions it has, it is sure to be intuitive and useful in ways we didn’t know we needed. However, most importantly, I can guarantee that it will be beautiful. Apple has a knack for creating objects of desire, that we end up glued to because we become drawn into the beauty, fun and wonder of the experience.

It is for these reasons why I finally expect this device to help solve the publishing conundrum: because people will actually read off it (unlike the resistance the Kindle & Nook have received). Apple has a proven business model in place that streams high-quality media content for reasonable costs: iTunes. Combine iTunes and this new tablet and I can finally see a viable solution for selling daily subscriptions to the New York Times on a handheld device. If people adore this tablet the same way they have adored Apple's iPod and iPhone, this could be a seminal turning point for the entire publishing industry.

And I, for one, certainly hope so.