power to the thinkers

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/01/newspapers-paywalls-and-core-users/

When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage.

This move in newspapers is a variation of my "all the smart people should form their own group" idea. It is good to see. (Note that if the smart people are not as smart as they think then this will reveal the fact as well. So it cannot fail. But it really needs the 'choose your own government' principle as well so the "smart" people can produce something more than divisive opinions.)