I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read that Dow Jones believes that people will pay for their news instead of getting it for free. Lucky for the micro-publishers that the big-media is still so insanely clueless.

More U.S. publishers likely will try to wean readers off free Internet versions of their newspapers by starting to charge online subscription fees, a Dow Jones & Co. Inc. executive said on Tuesday.

Charging for news that appears in print — and then giving it away over the Web — is “an unsustainable business model,” said Gordon Crovitz, president of electronic publishing at Dow Jones. The company’s Wall Street Journal is the only national U.S. newspaper to restrict access to virtually its entire Web edition to paid subscribers.

“It would be good for the industry” for more publishers to follow suit, Crovitz said in an interview after a company presentation at the Banc of America Securities media conference in New York on Tuesday.

“Publishers in all mediums have tended to devalue their brands,” he said. “I am very confident that other publishers will find ways to generate online subscription revenues.”

Converting free newspaper Web sites to a paid subscription business is a big issue in the publishing industry. [Read the rest]