As the advertising ice age continues killing off media dinosaurs, GigaOm's announcement of a plan to charge $79 a year for premium blog content again raises the issue: Is anybody actually willing to pay? Taken another way: How much media has to die before users are willing to pay for what's left?

With online ad revenue at the four top portals down 3.3 percent during the first quarter, according to eMarketer, publishers are scrambling for new revenue sources. Whether they will find them is a huge question for readers and publishers alike...