Has Putting Up a Paywall at The Guardian Become a Moral Imperative Rather Than a Choice?

By: Mathew Ingram | paidContent

Now that the Washington Post has erected a paywall (although it remains to be seen whether it will maintain that stance now that it is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) the Guardian newspaper in Britain is probably the most high-profile newspaper that doesn’t have a pay model of any kind — apart from its iPad app and mobile app, both of which cost a fee. But some media observers are arguing that it almost has a duty to put up a paywall, in order to support the kind of journalism it has been doing around the NSA story.