Newspapers and Antitrust

Tim Rutten wrote an opinion attended to influence people that fear government control over the news and newspapers into believing that the government should allow antitrust exemptions for newspapers. His opinion appeared in the Los Angeles Times titled Newspapers Need an Antitrust Exemption.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten4-2009feb04,0,4486364.column
Tim Rutten makes a poor attempted at using fear of government control of the news to purpose charging for news on the Internet. He suggests that all US newspapers should be allowed to conspire together to fix the prices of online news services. He argues that the government should give the newspaper industry an antitrust exemption to allow them to be able to participate in price fixing which otherwise would be illegal. He also argues that allowing free access to news on the web will cause newspapers to go bankrupt as a result their will not be any news on the internet.
Tim Rutten supports his argument for having to pay for newspapers on the internet by comparing the internet to cable TV. He states, “ We have, in our own recent history, a striking example of a free information medium that moved easily into the pay category: Thirty years ago, if you wanted to watch television, you went to the store, bought a TV set, came home, plugged it in and that was it.”
If a newspaper puts out a bad news content on the web people would simply stop read that newspaper online. The newspaper would have to improve its quality or it would go out of business. However, if the government gave the newspaper industry an antitrust exemption it would cause online readers of news to pay higher prices for inferior articles.