Each newspaper online is now charging for access to their content (i.e. New York Times, Salon, etc.) Why don't they allow us, the consumer, to "bundle" our own newspaper content sites into one and we are charged one flat yearly fee for unlimited access. For ex, Salon.com + New York Times + Slate, and on and on. One fixed fee, $19.95 for unlimited access and printing the articles. The more we add to our bundle the higher the charge. The way it's done now, Salon charges 19.95, NY Times charges 29.95, and on and on, which means you can easily be up to $100 for a year.
This idea was originally posted by an anonymous guest on the forbes.com Why Not? forum.
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I don't know who is charging you to see these free websites. I'm unfamiliar with Salon, but Slate, NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek and almost all other major newspapers and magazines allow you to view their online content for free. Check out Google News (http://news.google.com/), they have links to news from thousands of free news sources.
with the introduction of xml you can now read news from all of the web through one program called an aggregator, one that i recommend is called Sharp Reader. This site is also available in xml, check out the link to the left.
Something like this is currently available under the name KeepMedia. They offer access to "more than 170 leading publications." These include Atlantic, Newsweek, Business Week and PC Magazine. I haven't noticed any daily newspapers.
They offer archives that go back several years. The catch is that current content (what is on the newsstands) is not available. It becomes available as soon as it goes off the newstands.
Price: About $5. For everything.