Obama Endorses Paid Web Content

The parties pushing for paid newspaper content on the Web—Steven Brill's Journalism Online, Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp., Google among many others—now have a powerful supporter: Barack Obama.

In an interview with the Toledo Blade's Dave Murray, the president said, "What I hope is that people start understanding if you're getting your newspaper over the Internet, that's not free and there's got to be a way to find a business model that supports that." (This comes via The Hill.)

Obama also said he'd be "happy to look at" any newspaper bailout bills put before him and expressed concern that, "Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it's paid for, is really a challenge."

Obama described himself as a "big newspaper junkie," but to it's a good bet he didn't get to read many on Friday: He was way too busy being interviewed by, well, everybody.

The president appeared on five current events shows this past Sunday morning, leading the New York Times' Alexandra Stanley to call it, "a remarkable—and remarkably overt—display of media management." CBS News, which happily ran one of those interviews, then turned around and did a segment called "Ubiquitous Obama," criticizing the "all President Obama, all the time" approach to the press. CBS News reporter Kimberly Dozier estimated the Sunday morning stunt put President Obama in front of 10 million viewers total.

Tonight Obama is scheduled to appear on Late Show with David Letterman. For all we know, he may be prepping a cameo on the new Melrose Place.