Recent talk by newspapers & the AP have been to put up all or most of their content behind paywalls. What Ars is doing is placing long form/higher cost content

Recent talk by newspapers & the AP have been to put up all or most of their content behind paywalls. What Ars is doing is placing long form/higher cost content (e.g., long form PDF documents), exclusive features (e.g., ability to vote other users into the "hall of shame"), exclusive events (e.g., live chats w/ popular writers), and an ad-free experience behind a paywall, while leaving the majority of their content on the free, ad-supported site. And critics of the newspapers (or at least my criticism of the newspapers) plans to go paywall isn't that it's bad or wrong, just that it's a bad idea if it's all-or-nothing since readers will simply substitute. If newspapers were proposing something closer to what Ars is trying, I think you'd hear less criticism and more curious interest...